One Hundred
by rese
Summary: fanfic100 challenge attempted for Jo,Laurie
1. Blue

And lo, with job prospects non-existent and the promise of uni to arrive in another two months time, the poor and very bored writer picked up her pen (keyboard) and began to write (type).

In other words, I'm going to attempt our well-beloved fanfic100 challenge with Jo/Laurie in order to starve away the emptiness of "I have no job and high school is fin".

Happy New Year everyone and I hope your holidays have been safe and pleasant. Don't fret (if you did, lord knows I obviously haven't) my other unfinished fics are going ahead, I simply need something else to occupy my preoccupied brain. Actually updates should be soon… very soon.

On to the fic ranter!

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Anything recognisable to the glorious fandom is regretfully not mine, but Louisa M. Alcott's. No profit and such is gained.

…

Prompt 15: Blue

Rating: K

…

In the haze of late summer afternoons, when all there was to do was laze about Jo would consider her future. Writing was always a large part of her hopes and dreams and she knew that her future would be incomplete without it, and so her career was easily settled. But the one thing that troubled her the most was the one thing she would never admit to anyone who walked the same earth as she.

A partner.

In fact, Jo had spent and inordinate amount of time dwelling over what became an issue. How was he to appear? Would he appear? Did she even want him? Would she need someone like that at all? A husband.

It was only when Beth's health became more frail and her circle of friends tightened that his shape took form in her head. He would have to be tall, with broad shoulders and strong muscles. She couldn't have a soft dandy for a husband, undoubtedly the only man about the house. He would have to have dark hair, preferably thick and long enough to cover his ears just slightly, for short, shaven hair was entirely unappealing against a tall figure in a fine suit as Jo had proof in her neighbour's fickle fashions.

But his features – was it too frivolous to consider his nose and mouth? Jo wondered as she rested against the tree whose branches arched over into Laurie's yard.

The boy had popped over that morning with forget-me-nots spilling over his hands as a present for Marmee and Jo had never been so touched as she was when he gave them to her mother, promising with shining eyes that he wouldn't forget them again like he had last month during the mid-term rush of exams.

Was it wrong to hope that the future-man would have eyes the colours of those flowers which now stood proudly in a vase by the front window?

A tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired new friend stirred up the decisions Jo had made in her mind and she considered the depth of her dream-husband's morals, for his position had been set firmly after many afternoon's deliberations since Laurie began to stare more intently at her when he came by. Would he be versed in philosophies as the professor? Could he play an instrument the way her two dearest friends could? She wasn't sure. She didn't know.

But he had to have those blue eyes, even if the colour made her scowl and want to stay in New York forever.

A niece and nephew were born and the afternoons didn't seem any shorter, even with the presence of new, little and busy life as her younger sister continued to fade against the tartan sofa throw-rug.

Life grew to be a little more precious and so did her ideals.

He would have blue eyes, the same as the ribbon around Demi's head she nodded to herself, smiling briefly at her brother in law as he shuffled by with a babe in his arms, asking about Laurie and his visiting habits before the ridiculously tall boy clamoured into the room upsetting the babies with his loud, deep voice.

Jo spent a few more afternoons wondering when he'd grown up so fast under her watchful gaze. And why his own peepers seemed so much darker than she remembered, curtained as they were around his dark hair which had lengthened under her reprimands.

And why they seemed to be the wrong colour.

When Laurie strode up to Meg's gate with an energetic step and nervous hands but a friendly smile Jo didn't know where the future-man went in her mind and she felt deserted as he took her arm and beamed down at her.

Jo felt all her planning was for nothing as the proposal she was likely to receive only once in her life approached. She felt cheated. Laurie wasn't the man. Certainly he had the height, the stature, the beautiful hair. But the eyes! His were dark, black as night, the colour of Hannah's kettle, or the crow's wing. Not blue like Amy's best dress or the fine ink she bought once and never used.

It wasn't right, Jo decided as they stilled in the grove, half-way home. Without that colour, how could he be the man she had almost willed into being for so many days ends?

Laurie lowered his voice and pleaded with her until Jo sat patiently. It was when she turned to the posting beside her as Laurie begun to have his say that she found the blue. Wild forget-me-nots grew by the stump, standing proudly amongst the tall grasses that grew around them, their colour stubborn and unyielding on the wood's floor.

It was right, in fact it was perfect.

But why then, Jo mulled afternoons later, couldn't she say yes when she turned to face Laurie, whose dark eyes waited for her answer?


	2. Dinner

Prompt 58: Dinner

Rating: T

It was terribly late at night but Jo had thrust herself into her writing that sunset and had scribbled tirelessly all night without break, even as her stomach rumbled or her bladder felt pressed. There was simply no time to care for bodily functions when her muse struck.

A soft tap at the wooden door to the garret made Jo jump in her seat, causing her nib to flick across the page through some of her carefully chosen words.

"Oh Christopher Columbus!" she exclaimed the phrase without any of her usual joy but with a dismay that told the knocker to enter without much fuss and with the greatest care.

The door creaked open and the intruder stepped into the attic, careful to bend through the short door before he climbed the three short steps to the person he sought. Jo sat at her desk, barely illuminated by her dying candle, her pins scattered about the room and ink-stained hands buried in her hair as she slumped over the hopeless mess she'd made.

"Oh go away," Jo moaned into her paper as she heard her visitor approach. "I've made a right mess of it all now and I'm not in the mood."

The intruder raised his brows at her addition which insinuated that he was 'in the mood', and was unsure whether its inclusion was unfair or not.

"Well I've brought you dinner! Not that it matters too much at, oh one in the morning."

Jo's head shot up at the mention of the time. "What!? Oh no! The children! The cats! No one's been fed! I haven't kissed them goodnight! Oh where are my pins!?"

A plate filled with peas, carrots and an unhealthy amount of gravy which covered an overcooked chop landed in front of her, stilling the frantic words that spilled out of her tired mind.

"Don't worry – all's well!" exclaimed her helpful visitor who clapped her on the back before moving to stand behind her, resting his chin on Jo's bewildered head as he read pieces of her work. "Well, maybe not your parchment, but the chil'en are all tucked safe in their beds, my dear."

Jo frowned at the hand that patted her shoulder. "And you fed the cats?" she scooped a couple of peas onto her fork, feeling the panic inside dissipate as the patronising hand moved to the back of her neck.

"Mm-hm."

"And you all had dinner?" She felt another hand creep its way up her arm, large fingers tracing the fabric's stitching at her shoulder. The peas didn't taste that bad. "And everyone said their prayers? James too?" Even the carrots were boiled well enough.

"Yes, Jo." She felt the oddest sensation as her husband spoke without taking his jaw off the top of her head. His hands were playing with the ends of her loose hair, then moving to flick the lobes of her ears and back to her neck, gently kneading the tight muscles which had begun to protest at the hunched angle Jo had sat to write all night.

"Now eat your dinner and come to bed!" He instructed tapping the top of her head and disappearing out the door without the care he had entered with, leaving Jo with her mouth open ready for the chewy lamb and not for Laurie's housewifery.


	3. Dark

Prompt 74: Dark

Rating: k

It's was pitch black when he opened his eyes. Someone was tugging his arm and for the life of him he couldn't figure out who it was.

"Laurie, are you awake?"

Well he bloody was now.

"Mmph," he mumbled, rolling over onto his back, completely unready for whatever this mystery person wanted from him.

"It's kicking!" the voice whispered and realisation snapped instantly for Laurie. He was in bed. Jo was next to him. Jo was pregnant.

"Good God!" he cried, sitting up and scrambling closer to where he assumed Jo was lying. If she was hurt or the baby was in trouble, he would never forgive himself. And after all this time –

"Oh for heavens sake," Jo grumbled, interrupting his panicked thoughts and reaching out to catch his wrist. There she was! She didn't sound like she was in pain, but then Jo had always been good at hiding –

"Teddy, it's ok, I just wanted you to feel it." She had gotten pretty good at reading his thoughts and moods too. "It's the oddest sensation," she spoke and Laurie could hear the barely contained rapture in her voice. Jo tugged his hand across the undeterminable gap between them until his fingers were touching the fabric of her nightgown that stretched across her stomach. He was so proud of his little wife, even if she did wake him up in the dead of night.

Laurie flattened his palm against Jo's belly and waited silently, hearing only the steady breath of his wife in time with his own. He wondered as his fingers moved slowly across the textured cloth of her gown if their baby would breathe in unison too, keeping the same time as he had with Jo for so long.

A little vibration thumped lightly under his palm and Laurie's hand froze. A smile stretched across his face and he was struck speechless by the little beat that appeared. "Jo…" he breathed in amazement, unsure what to say in such a moment.

Jo shuffled around a bit after a while and finally her belly moved from under his hand so that Laurie supposed she was lying down again. Laurie was very still; confused by his wife's seemingly indifference to what he felt was surely a little miracle. Their baby was moving!

"Aren't you happy, Jo?" he asked into the darkness beside him.

"Are you blind? Teddy, I'm grinning like a Cheshire cat!" Jo scoffed and Laurie could hear the smile in her tone.

"Well how was I supposed to know? It's as black as night – it is the night!" he defended himself unimaginatively before lying down as well to curl around his partner. To be fair, it was still very early and he'd been awake for only ten minutes.

"You need to eat more carrots."


	4. Moon

Prompt 45: Moon

When it wasn't illuminating the skin of the person he lay beside, Laurie didn't care much for the moon. It wasn't that the celestial sphere was an ugly creation of God or that it was useless and unhelpful, it was just that there were more pressing issues to be addressed whenever it made itself present.

Laurie's hand paused over the swell of skin he had caressed for the past hour and he watched his lover's face with concern. Jo had been a bear today, storming about the library and growling at him to hurry with his studies, "she hadn't all day" and fixing a haphazard tea which on a good day would have been dangerous to eat. Once she had changed and they'd climbed into bed Jo rolled on her side to face a wall of windows and proceeded to ignore him until she had finally fallen asleep with a frown on her face.

It wasn't the best day.

He saw the way Jo's eyes moved back and forth under her lids and Laurie wondered what had caused such a turn in her manners today. Supposing, if it had anything to do with the glowing orb that shone through the tall windows over her head and the stories of lunatics and madmen roaming the asylums so late at night once a month.

Laurie cracked a smile at his thoughts, for though he rarely understood some of Jo's quirks and desires he could hardly blame it on anything other than the wonderful person herself. After all, that was the person he loved and if he didn't love her for the things he found odd he might as well be in love with her cooking.

Feeling a little ill at the reminder of his dinner, Laurie rolled over onto his back, tucking the pair of hands that dearly liked to roam another's body under his curly crop. His eyes grew heavier blink by blink but still he continued to stare at the moon as he decided that despite its annoyances and inconveniences at the time, Laurie did rather like the bad days because that certain someone beside him would always be there for the next.


	5. Fall

Prompt 64: Fall (Autumn as we call it here in Oz)

Prompt 64: Fall (Autumn as we call it here in Oz)

WARNING: this chapter is rated M for safety. It contains sexual references and adult themes or so SBS would say. So skip this one if you're not old enough or you don't like hints of smut. Coz that's what you're getting here. Maybe the next chapter will be a continuation with full blown smutisious content eh?

A/N: so I'm sitting here listening to my ilecture on genre and being bored. What is the cure for this? Jo/Laurie fanfic!! And finishing the lecture…

Jo tightened her grip on the cold iron pole that held the gate which separated the March's garden from the Laurence's as two large brown hands snaked around her waist. She was pulled back by those hands into the chest of their owner and Jo's eyes tightened at the feel of his hot breath down her neck as she watched the dying leaves drop from the oak tree that stretched from his backyard into her own.

She was twenty-three and she was sleeping with her best friend. She was twenty-three and she wasn't being let go.

"Jo," Laurie's voice rumbled from somewhere behind her, close to her ear and she felt the now very familiar tingle in her skin rise at the sound. "Jo, _please_. It isn't that bad really. Is it?" He shifted behind her until she felt his body flush against her back and his hands rest lower by her hips and Jo blinked quickly, turning her face away from where she guessed his head was now by hers.

"Jo," he began again when she still said nothing, slowly moving his lips against the nape of her neck as he drew out her name mournfully, wondering just where all his powers for wheedling had gone.

"No," Jo finally spoke, her hand on the iron flexing with her unhappy answer. Jo shut her eyes from the scene of turning seasons, her tense shoulders relaxing as she accepted Laurie's embrace with the realisation that she was going to lose this argument. Once again.

"No, I guess it's not."

Behind her Laurie frowned, Jo had given in all too easily – far more quickly than he expected – and her tone was entirely dull and accepting. "What's wrong?" he asked straightening with concern. She hadn't let him touch her for a week and when she'd kissed him at long last after lunch Laurie had taken it that she'd gotten over whatever it was and was willing to have him back. Women were the most confusing by far but Jo was on another level of mystery.

"Nothing's wrong" Jo told him as she turned around to face him, finding herself in an all too overdone disagreement. How many times had they fought about love-making? How many times had she pressed him and been pressed to marry? How many times had they both become too involved to care for the much needed answers? "It's just…" she looked up to see his black eyes boring into hers, "It's fall again and nothing's really changed."

Laurie stepped back with realisation, his hands falling from her side to rub his chin and curl onto his own waist as he looked everywhere but at her. "Oh…" he turned a little red, feeling like a little boy all over again and wishing he'd learnt to grow up somewhere between leading Jo to his bed and seeing her youngest sister marry his old friend.

"I'm sorry, but it needs to be said." She was just as uncomfortable about the topic, knowing that every time they'd brought it up before it ended up with one of them doing something stupid instead of fixing the situation. "And this time we really shouldn't just – well, you know…" Jo gestured loosely between them, still unable to say aloud what they did behind closed doors.

"I know," he said understandingly, moving to take her equally restless hands. "It's not as if we haven't said we aren't not getting wed." Jo's lips twitched at his use of negatives and she nodded, glad that he was contributing to the discussion instead of plastering her to a wall as he was wont to do. "And well, it's not as if it's too late to get married, in fact I'm sure it'd make a lot of people happy." Jo nodded again, thinking of how tired her mother looked when she saw them in the same room and the not entirely pleased expression of his grandfather as she sat by Laurie at the piano.

Silently they both added that Jo hadn't wanted to be married at all, fearing they would fight every moment and be miserable every day. But then Laurie had kissed her that following month and it hadn't been long following that they lay sweat-soaked on his bed in less-than-the-usual amount of clothing.

"We should do it," her hands tightened in his as she said it and Laurie watched Jo's expression carefully. "It's the right thing. We should do it." Jo repeated and Laurie hoped she was saying it because she wanted it. Jo should do it for no one else but herself.

"If you're sure?" he said quietly, bending until he was eye-level. Jo was very still but she wore the look that she gave him when he hesitated shirtless over her. He nodded and stepped forward to hug her closely. "Then we'll do it."

Jo nodded against his chest and felt herself break into a smile as a huge pressure somewhere inside her suddenly disappeared with the thought of sin and punishment and being a wife to Laurie didn't seem quite so disagreeable. In fact, Jo realised, that deep down inside behind that pressure she really had wanted nothing else this past year.

"Well I guess that settles it!" Laurie cried, pulling back to grin at the woman he'd always imagined to be his wife, seeing his future in her grey eyes and gentle smile. He cupped her jaw, feeling the softness he'd grown accustomed to touching whenever he could and leaned in to press a well-intended kiss against her mouth.

Jo's eyes closed at the sensation of Laurie's hot mouth on hers and involuntarily stepped back into the gate as he advanced closer, his left hand creeping behind her back, pushing her against him eagerly. The iron pole jutted into her back but Jo gripped the collar of his white shirt and tugged him as close as possible, smiling uncontrollably as they kissed under the tree whose leaves kept falling.


	6. Eyebrow

Prompt 96: (writer's choice) Eyebrows

Prompt 96: (writer's choice) Eyebrows

Rated: T

A/N: So turns out I can take notes _AND_ write the starts for fic during ENGL120 lectures about story and discourse…

Jo's thumbs stroked across the length of his brow, the edge of her nails scraping his temple at the end of their journey. The young man's black eyes, normally hidden under his satisfied lids during the action, now stared at her face searching for what he knew not as Jo steadily ignored him.

Laurie looked down from his position draped over her on the sofa in his bedroom. Every inch of Jo was turned away from him, looking out the window that faced her garden. Every bit except her hands which lazed about his brow, barely touching in their blind path.

"Jo," he began quietly seeing her cheek twitch in response. She was sorry, he knew it. But he wasn't and he wasn't sure if she knew it. The silence that followed wasn't exactly assuring.

"It's ok" Jo cut in, her voice still hoarse. She wanted to spare him, Laurie thought, a familiar sense of self pity beginning to bubble in his chest. If he could only have seen that she really didn't love him deep down just like she'd said in the woods those few years ago.

The clouds outside gathered around the tree tops at the edge of Jo's vision and her fingers stilled even as she could feel the steady beat of Laurie's heart almost against her own.

"No it's not" he said at last, shifting until he'd rolled off her, sitting up to look down into her face properly. "I shouldn't have – I'm so sorry I've… I've really made a mess of things." Laurie watched her out of the corner of his eyes, his hand covering his face with the admission.

Jo moved slowly, sitting up too still just as unable to meet Laurie's indirect gaze.

"If I hadn't pushed this – pushed us – then I wouldn't have made us so miserable. I'm truly sorry Jo dear. I truly am."

Quickly grabbing her hand for a final squeeze, Laurie left the room leaving Jo sitting curled up, looking out the window holding the hand he'd said goodbye to.

Jo sat in her empty bedroom later that night, hugging her legs under the covers as she listened to the branches of the thin ash tree scratching the window panes. She was watching the bed where Beth once laid but thinking of another who she was sure had left her behind through her own fault too.

She hadn't smiled after he kissed her.

Jo thought back to the moment she saw him in the door frame that morning, his hairs still wet and his eyes born wild from the cold wind that rushed about between their houses.

"You won't believe it!" he'd said entering unbidden into her mother's kitchen mindless of the mud on his shoes and the ends of his trousers. He'd come to see her and all traces of their argument from yesterday had disappeared from his frownless face.

"Freddie Vaughn has gone and asked our Amy to marry him! And what do you think, my Jo? She won't have him! She's gone and refused Fred – Fred Vaughn! How about it Jo?"

She didn't know whether to smile or frown but simply wiped her already clean hands on her apron and moved into the sitting room deciding her words as Laurie followed her.

"Well… I'm sure she knows what she wants then," said Jo carefully, sitting down unsurprised to find her neighbour settling directly beside her.

"Well indeed!" Laurie's brows rose and teeth flashed in an uncontrollable smile at her. "I would've thought you'd have plenty to say on the matter ma'am. Your sister was proposed to – aren't you shocked at the nerve of that boy?" Laurie looked off to the side near the fireplace presumably thinking of 'that boy'.

"But if it's as you said; she won't have him."

Laurie watched her for a moment unable to tell if she was happy or not about that. Jo looked very white and she couldn't meet his gaze. Was she in shock?

"Are you alright?"

She turned to him looking a little startled. "Of course! Why wouldn't I be?" her hands hadn't stopped folding and unfolding and she itched to be out of his presence.

"You don't look it."

"I think you should go," Jo said very suddenly watching Laurie blink at the change of discourse.

"What?"

"You're right; I think I have a headache. Goodbye then," Jo stood in a rush only to wait by the door until he finally left, shoulders slumped and a hurt look on his face. Jo had done that to him a few times and she was sure he'd get over it as he had all the previous times. She desperately needed to be alone.

That afternoon, alone in the attic she could feel him watching her from his study window, the deep set of his brow no doubt contemplating her confusing behaviour and what he'd done to deserve it.

Jo stared at the book she was pretending to read unable to stop thinking about her sister and proposals. Amy had been away for so long and whilst she'd hinted at an attachment to Fred Vaughn Jo hadn't thought it to be nearly as serious. She felt as if she hardly knew her sister anymore. It wasn't Laurie's fault he'd received the news first and he wasn't to blame for conjuring memories of their own disastrous one. It was just the way he'd looked at the fire…

Jo cleared her throat and tried to read the words in front of her, unable to stop herself from glimpsing down to see if he was still there, still watching. Laurie's seat was empty and Jo's heart skipped a beat from what emotion she couldn't place. Maybe he'd finally gotten over her silliness or maybe he was taking tea.

A few moments later the garret door opened and Jo saw Laurie's head peaking around it, judging the atmosphere, judging her before her stepped through.

Jo's first thought was that she should have known he'd come back, her second that he looked ridiculous. Laurie had clearly rushed out of the house as he hadn't even donned a coat and hat and wore instead a long rather poorly knitted scarf around his neck, wrapped about as shoddily as it had been dyed. Jo had given it to him last year after Beth had died.

The tall young man ducked his head before wrapping his long legs beneath him to sit beside her by the window.

"Why'd you sit here if you didn't want me to see you?"

Jo looked briefly away, a little embarrassed at being caught. "I suppose I was being selfish," she answered honestly. She closed the book she hadn't even begun to read, smiling sheepishly at her friend as he patted her arm.

"I didn't mind."

They were both silent, still unable to look each other in the eye even as Laurie leaned towards Jo who felt incredibly guilty. She had hurt her boy terribly over the past two years, refusing him in the grove, watching him pine for her over the hedge and refuse his trip to Europe, dragging him through her grief as Beth passed away and she yearned simply for company of which he wanted more. If she could only make it up to him without causing any more pain than she had. If she would let him kiss her as he had tried infrequently since he told her he loved her would it be enough?

Jo frowned at the memory of her thoughts, shivering as the moon shone through the branches by the window. She looked around the silent room finding so much had changed over the time Beth had taken ill to now. The emptiness was deafening and Jo could feel it echo through the house where all her sisters were missing.

Laurie had been the greatest and most disturbing comfort as her sisters one by one left her behind in Orchard House. He had held her in the darkest hours of her life and tried to love her when she wouldn't have it. He did love her better than anyone else, Jo admitted to herself, rubbing her cold legs where goosebumps appeared at the thought. She knew it and that was why she had followed him home to dinner that evening.

Laurie had helped her up in the garret and led her downstairs, talking about tea and wishing she wouldn't make dinner anymore, not that she hadn't improved but his constitution couldn't take her meals'… enthusiasm. He asked if she would deem to have tea at the Laurences' to make up for their amounting misunderstandings and Jo smiled generously at him for the offer.

She thought it might be enough to make for an apology, better than a kiss even, to which the tall boy ducked his head looking a little flush and Jo's face played with a frown.

They'd entered the house quickly finding Laurie's grandfather by the piano looking out at the March's. The old fellow turned around with a tired but understanding face repeating Laurie's request for Jo to join them for dinner and she smiled back her answer, taking his arm to the table whilst Laurie shoved his own empty hands into his trouser pockets, trailing behind them pulling faces to keep Jo smiling so nicely.

After a meal of duck and roast vegetables, during which Jo frowned only once when she saw the smallest helping of vegetables in existence on Laurie's plate the two moved to the study after Mr Laurence declared he would retire early.

"Would you look at us if you please?" Laurie announced, putting his hands in his pockets again as he collapsed into a chair by the door, watching Jo wander about the shelves of books she seemed to always adore. "We haven't fought once this evening."

Jo looked behind at him smiling in agreement, "I know, it's a miracle isn't it?" She pulled a blue leather jacketed book from its lopsided perch next to a Dickens and Laurie jumped up suddenly appearing next to her as she opened it. "What?"

"You're not going to read _that_ again are you?" he asked, one arm resting against the wall, leaning over her ever so slightly. She knew he was teasing but something made her frown and snap the book shut.

"And why shouldn't I?"

"You _always _read that book, Jo. It isn't even good."

Jo's eyes narrowed and she was ready to tell him off before she realised how silly they were being. So she laughed.

Dropping the book onto the shelf to hold her stomach Jo couldn't stop laughing and when she saw Laurie's concerned look she laughed harder, falling to the floor in stitches.

"Heavens!" she choked out between gasps of air as Laurie bent in front of her, worry etched across his face. "You can't go a day without baiting for an argument," Jo told him smiling widely as he finally understood what she found so funny.

Chuckling himself, Laurie sat in front of her, folding his hands and studying her mirth.

"What?" she asked again as he continued to watch her and she sobered.

"It's just, you haven't looked that way for a long while Jo March." Laurie took her hands and Jo felt her face go hot with the way his eyes scanned her.

"I haven't had much to laugh about." She said quietly looking at the carpeted ground where their crossed legs were touching. "But you've been so good Teddy," she quickly added giving him a small smile when he looked relieved.

"Come on," he said pulling them up and leading her upstairs.

Jo pulled her hands from under the blankets, feeling the cold air against them chill her fingers. She watched them in the dark, the little light from the moon giving them a deathly blue look. Laurie really was very good to her, even when she was nothing but a heartless girl. She didn't know what was wrong with her for even now, alone in her bed, Mother, Father and Hannah sleeping below she knew her face was turning red and her heart was thumping in her chest at what happened when Laurie had taken her upstairs.

Laurie opened the door to his sitting room and Jo could see his bed in the next room as he led her to the sofa. He paced around in front of her for a bit and Jo hoped he wasn't going to say or do anything rash as he'd often done when that look came across his face.

His hands were on his waist and he faced the alcove of books in the corner of the room leaving Jo wondering what to say. And they were getting along so well just before, she thought hoping he wasn't being moody and ready to ruin it.

"I thought I had a book for you here," Laurie spoke just as Jo had her mouth open to say something to break the confusing silence. "But someone's taken it. Probably one of the maids, she did point it out the other day and then I explained to her that it was… nevermind." He stopped himself and sat beside Jo, his arms resting on his knees with his hands folded in front. "Sorry," he said shortly.

Jo smiled pitying him and held his arm, "That's alright. It's the thought that counts anyway, right?"

"Right," he looked at her, becoming a little too serious for Jo's liking. "Jo…"

"Teddy!" she interrupted, gripping his arm a little tighter, "uh… did you ever finish that b-" Laurie had leaned across, his hands still folded as she struggled to distract him, forgetting to remove her hand from his arm, and hesitated just slightly before placing his lips on hers in mid sentence.

Jo's eyes went wide as her eyebrows climbed her forehead, her hand loosening on his forearm, feeling the slightest pang in her chest as he pulled away. Jo sat jaw-slacked and unblinking from the soft tingling left behind as Laurie studied her.

"Was that so bad?"

Jo couldn't even begin to form the words in her head to answer him. It was all too different from what she thought it would be, the heat in her ears, the calm look on his face and the slight shaking feeling she felt take hold of her limbs.

"Uh…"

She watched Laurie move closer again, this time placing his hand either side of the sofa around her as he dipped his head and kissed her. Jo's eyes drifted shut this time, and her mouth moved on its own accord against his, making him press a little harder, his fists balling beside her in the sofa cushions.

Jo lifted a hand to his face, fully intending to gently push him away but when she felt his own hand brush her side, hers cupped his jaw and Jo knew she was kissing him back.

"Mph," she half-heartedly tried to resist before leaning into the back of the lounge letting him invade her space, his hands running their way about her waist and shoulders. She couldn't help but arch into them when they, quite accidentally she was certain he'd later say, touched the underside of her chest, sending her into little shivers she would never be able to explain.

Jo laid down in bed, going through the memory in her mind, shutting her eyes when she remembered the way his form had hovered over hers, careful not to crowd her when all she could think was that he should. Quantifying the experience was beyond her and Jo was sure she'd ruined any chance of a repeat with the way they'd both reacted afterwards.

She didn't know what was wrong with her. Her dearest friend… Jo rolled over feeling her head ache with the desire to sleep, and clutching the blankets and sheets that weighed her down tighter she considered just how she would even be able to speak to him again after such a change.


	7. Square

Prompt 43: Square

Prompt 43: Square

A/N: I really should be finalising my philosophy essay instead of writing yet another fic, but ask yourself, would you rather read jo/laurie or stoicism?

Jo pricked her finger on the needle, _again_.

"Oh for heaven's sake!" she cried throwing the jacket and the brown square button she couldn't seem to re-attach onto the spare seat beside her. "It's useless. There's no possible way _that_ button is going back on _that_ jacket by way of _these_ hands. And what on earth are you looking at?" Jo glared at the person who she was absolutely positive had been staring at her the past hour, but every time she looked up he was looking outside or at Beth's piano.

"Sorry?" he said, knowing full well it would only rile Jo further.

Her neck was turning red and the little vain under her collar twitched just a bit. "Don't pretend you haven't been doing it! I can feel you watching me Theodore Laurence and I wish you'd just stop!" She stood, fists balled at her side as he uncrossed his legs and stared up at her.

"I really don't know what you're talking about." Laurie said calmly, folding his hands and leaning back in his chair. Boy was he going to get it, he thought, struggling to maintain his cool, indifferent air as he could practically feel the heat come off her.

"Right!" Jo spoke at the top of her voice, "That's it!" and she grabbed him by the arms and dragged him out the front door, surprising the young man who stood two heads taller than Jo.

"What're you doing?" he asked tentatively unsure whether he wanted to know the answer. "Jo, dear?"

"Don't you dare 'Jo, Dear' me!"

Laurie closed his eyes, expecting her to thump him one but she simply continued dragging him about the garden until they reached the gate which lead to the street. Quickly she pushed him through it and locked the latch once the tall boy was on the other side. It was a useless action as the gate stood but a little higher than their thighs but Jo was sure she made her point.

Stamping her foot she about turned and headed back to the house. Laurie was fast though and he leant over the short wooden gate quick enough to catch her elbow. If she wasn't going to fight him after he acted clueless she certainly would now and he braced himself for her fists and sharp words.

Jo stood mouth agape at his gall to stop her from going back inside and was ready to yell at him when she saw his slight smile and expectant look. So he wanted this! Well, Jo thought shocked at the discovery, it all made sense now. See if he should like her all compliant then!

"Yes, Teddy?" she asked sweetly, careful not to blink too many times. "Was there something you needed?"

Laurie's face fell a little but he quickly caught himself. He was _sure_ she'd be furious. "Who, me? Not at all!"

"Very well. If you'll let me go then," she said looking at his hand wrapped about her arm.

"What if I don't?"

He saw her face go a little red as she set her jaw in answer. Jo tugged her arm but Laurie's grip was fierce and she could feel her skin under his thumb burn.

"Let go." Jo tugged her arm again, almost tripping him over the gate as he kept hold of her.

"No!" he was smiling and Jo thought briefly what nice teeth he had before she pulled her arm, stepping away from him.

"Let go!"

"I don't think so!"

Finally, with great force Jo freed herself and like a bolt of lightning she took off, catching her skirts up in her hand she ran off around the house.

"Hey!" Laurie called after her, and jumping the fence he ran after her.

This is ridiculous, Jo thought to herself but she was unable to stop a smile from spreading across her face. She did love a good run and Laurie was always one of her favourite partners in crime. As fast as she could, Jo made it behind the house, mindful of the damper grass and muddy patches ever present, ready to make her slip.

She considered hiding behind a tree until he gave up looking for her but Jo's restless limbs were keen for the exercise so she decided to run for the river. Picking up her skirts again she looked back at the house only once before bounding off like a deer.

Laurie had however anticipated such a move from her and was already half way to the river, praying that he knew her well enough and wouldn't look like a complete fool. His legs were longer too, he thought proudly and he was a boy, a man now he corrected thinking of his nineteen years, and it was well known that men ran better and faster than women.

Or so he thought until he glimpsed Jo through the trees a little ahead of him and he had to smile. It was only right that she'd be able to outdo him. He slowed down a little to admire the way her legs stretched out each leap-like step she took, her hair bouncing behind her as it freed itself more and more of the net she'd tied it in that morning when he came.

Finally arriving at the bank of the river Jo stopped, desperately trying to catch her breath, disappointed that she'd become so unfit over the past few years but proud of the burn in her chest and lack of Laurie as far as she could see.

Not but a moment later however the tall man came running up in front of her, smiling at her messy appearance, "Well that was refreshing," he breathed, annoyingly not-so-out-of breath as Jo or so she thought.

Jo couldn't feign her anger any longer and she laughed as Laurie bent, resting his hands on his long knees to breathe better, unable to stop himself from laughing with her.

There was a moment of quiet as they both expected someone to find them and begin the usual lecture. But Meg was now married, Amy was in Europe and Beth lay sleeping in a chair by Hannah in the kitchen.

Laurie straightened and still smiling he moved to stand closer to Jo, reaching out to brush her long hair over her shoulder. His hand lingered a bit, brushing her yellow linen collar and Jo wondered if it was wrong that the action didn't feel out of place.

"You sure are a funny girl Jo."

"Oh am I?" she questioned, guessing he was trying to wind her up again.

"Yeah, but I like that."

Swiftly Laurie bent and kissed her on the edge of her mouth, touching more of her cheek than her lips with his, shutting his eyes to memorise the cool softness before he pulled back quickly.

Jo was as red as she was when she was mad at him and he smiled at the similarity. She could have been in a fight with him just now for all her looks – her hair out and wild, her eyes glazed and pink-tinged skin.

"Oh," Jo managed to say at length, her hand dancing towards her cheek as she watched the ground, her eyes darting to look at his face. He looked unsure but not unhappy and Jo didn't know what to make of any of it. She stepped forward, intending to tell him off or push him but she couldn't bring herself to do either and when he leaned in again she leant too.

Jo let him slip a hand around her waist as his lips touched hers in a light frenzy. Her hands brought his head still against hers and as they kissed, properly kissed, Jo felt her already tired legs start to buckle. Her hands ran down his front, grasping at his tie, his vest, across to his arms where his shirt was rolled up, a little damp from running after her.

She smiled against his warm lips thinking back to how angry and how easily he made her so.

"You know you really are very strange," he said quickly before continuing to kiss her, unsurprised to find her slightly less agreeable when he pulled her against him a little roughly.

"Excuse me?" she managed to get out before he began a trail down her neck eager to hear what she would say even as she seemed to clam up under the new but hardly unpleasant sensation. "I – oh… hardly… think this is the… Teddy! - time to argue. Don't you?"

Laurie smiled victoriously against the skin of her collar bone when he reached the hollow dip that peaked out of the high neckline of her dress. He could feel her swallow as he lingered and he wondered what she would do if he suggested she needed a lower collar.

"Laurie!" Jo practically squeaked when his mouth could be felt again the skin near her ear but when she groaned, grabbing a fistful of his vest as he kissed her earlobe he knew exactly why he would never let this woman not marry him.

"Jo, you've got to marry me," he said a little breathless from their activity but earnestly. "I can't –" he stopped himself wondering what he meant to say. Continue without taking it too far and your honour with it? "Let you go" he decided, meaning every word despite thinking his former thought, "not now, not after this. And I think you mean to have me too."

Jo looked at him seriously, "I… I suppose I do." She said slowly, conflicts about love and carnal lust stirring at the back of her mind until she looked at her hands clasped in his clothes. "Heavens I've broken a button," Jo spotted the missing square one by her fist and thought back to that morning during which she'd spent an hour trying to sew a very similarly shaped button onto another of his vests. The first one had snapped when they had been shoving each other in the Dovecote's front garden, making the babies squeal and Meg frown at them both.

Laurie had the ability to set her temper off only too easily but after today she knew he could set off so much more within her. "Alright I will" she nodded, looking up to find his black eyes watching carefully, "I will, I'll marry you Teddy." It felt right because no other creature could make her think so hard, laugh so much or yell so loudly and all the time love her for it.

When he picked her up off the muddy ground with his hug, she held his beloved face and kissed him deeply, forgetting all about square buttons and knowing that the wind in her hair as he spun them around belonged.


	8. Family

Prompt 24: Family

Prompt 24: Family

"Beth! Put it down!" Jo told the little girl who had her father's favourite pen in her chubby unknowing hands. "Please," she begged picking the child up and trying to pry the instrument from her just as Laurie walked into the room, patting his pockets and looking lost.

"Jo dear, have you seen –"

"It's right here and you can thank your daughter when she gives it up," Jo interrupted, passing her daughter over to Laurie whose face gave away his delight in holding the child. He was never, not even slightly, upset with his 'little miracle'.

"Have you found it, precious?" He asked Beth, holding her up and smiling when she squealed from the height, flailing the pen about as she watched her father's black eyes catch the light outside. "Can daddy have it?"

Cuddling the girl she gave it up instantly and Jo frowned spitefully at the scene, hands on her hips. "How come she listens to you and never me?"

"It's a secret." Laurie told her, smiling when Jo rolled her eyes and began to pick up the toys Beth had dragged into his study. "Besides, at least she listens to someone."

Jo spared a moment to look at him as she bent to pick up her daughter's favourite bear, "what a relief indeed."

"Goodness how your mother has become sarcastic," said Laurie to Beth as he shifted her in his arms, putting the pen on his desk and helping Jo with what was left of the mess. "Maybe she needs a good tickle to set her right?" he suggested, tickling Beth whose peals of laughter couldn't stop Jo from smiling. Laurie looked over smiling too. "Well that seemed to do the trick," he said proudly.

Jo walked tiredly over to him, her hands filled with the toys Laurie spoilt his daughter with and kissed his cheek.

She couldn't imagine a better family.


	9. Passing

Prompt 65: Passing

Prompt 65: Passing

A/N: so yeah, turns out you can write a lot in a 3 hour gap between a lecture and tutorial and the previous chapter, this one and I think about 3 others that will follow this are the product of waiting around yesterday and this morning for uni to hurry up and be over.

Jo's hand tightened around his and Laurie watched her face carefully as Jo continued to stare at the body of her sister, still in her bed as still as the dolls around her.

He could feel the tremble of arm through their entwined fingers and he shut his eyes, overcome with emotion.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this.

Jo was breathing in little short gasps and he knew she was close to crying next to him, something she'd promised she wouldn't do with that tiny wrinkle of determination in her brow before they'd entered the room. But he hadn't believed her for a moment. Jo had loved that dear girl better than anyone else he knew.

Laurie swallowed hard, opening his eyes again desperately trying to be the strong person Jo needed. Not the lover, not the neighbour – she needed her best friend and he was determined to be the best he could, even if his eyes couldn't stop from blurring when he looked at the bed.

Jo cleared her throat in the hushed bedroom before she hesitantly stretched a hand out to the girl, looking very much as though she would touch her. Laurie was surprised when she dropped his hand to straighten the covers methodically instead of stroking her cold sister's forehead.

"It's not fair," she said in a small voice that he wouldn't have placed with the woman. Jo's words sounded broken and wet and he tried not to grimace as his heart struck with her speech.

"I know."

Jo stood over the bed, her hands still flat on the sheets from smoothing them over unable to look at Beth's face.

"Laurie?" she sounded very close to crying and so he stood to move beside her.

"I know, Jo" he wrapped his long arms around her frozen form and rubbed her back, smoothing and soothing as Jo had with the bed. "It really isn't" his voice thick with the emotion he wouldn't let go until he laid in bed that night.

Jo, unable to hold her breath any longer, wept in one gushing exhale, her body sagging against his tall one and she was grateful, oh so grateful Laurie had come home to her.


	10. Summer

Prompt 63: Summer

Prompt 63: Summer

Their legs hung over the edged of the little boat and Jo smiled up at the sun beating down on their browning bodies. Not so many years ago she might've pushed the boy that lay next to her, loosely holding her hand, off the little dinghy but as it was Jo'd grown quite accustomed to the little tender gestures he'd limited himself to. Not so many years ago they weren't quite so attached to two other important people who had laughed at their adventures where they behaved as if it was not so many years ago.

Jo turned her hand, still smiling brightly to find him turned the same way to her but perhaps without such a wide smile.

"How many plays do you suppose I wrote in this boat?" Jo asked, interested to see how much attention he really paid back then. He could hardly have kept count.

"One actually, dear." Her brows rose in surprise at his decisive, and she was sure, incorrect answer. "Well you only ever did write one in its entirety. I do recall a large amount of dilly-dallying and pushing certain people into a certain temperature of water." Jo laughed as he squeezed her hand.

"Well as I remember it, certain persons deserved it!"

Laurie smiled, rolling his head to look up at the sky, a look of nostalgia crossing his face of twenty-eight years. Jo had always thought it to be a very fine face and she would proudly tell everyone of the handsome brother-in-law she had. But sometimes there were pieces of expressions that entered his black eyes, or crossed his dichotic mouth that made her stomach unsettled and the idea of his being her brother-in-law only too frightfully forgettable.

"It's just as well we're so old and serious now," said she, looking up at the clear summer sky again as Laurie shifted on his back making the boat rock a little and their shoulders bump up together.

"Speak for yourself sister Jo!" he spoke the name neither seemed to use seriously as he put on an affronted tone. "I'll have you know I'm as spritely and deserving as ever!" Laurie grinned wickedly when she looked at him and something inside Jo stirred, wondering what he'd do.

"Oh really?" she begun, planning to play along as they both leant on their elbows facing each other. Jo was ready to list all the things he couldn't do anymore when she saw a flash of a look cross his face and he shut eyes, quickly leaning forward to plant a kiss on her half-opened mouth.

It was all so fast but incredibly thorough as he pressed his lips against hers, grazing the bottom of her lip with the tip of his tongue. Jo could feel his teeth just behind the surprisingly soft flesh of his lips where drops of spittle gathered between them in the heat.

"Teddy!" she cried when he pulled away, a glint in his eyes she hadn't seen in over a year and Jo shoved him in the chest until his tall frame shifted the weight in the boat and they both tipped over.

After a moments struggle underwater Jo swam to the surface blindly reaching for the overturned boat to stop herself from being dragged under by her heavy dress. Laurie was nowhere to be seen and Jo panicked, her hand slipping from the curved underside of the boat as she spun about calling him.

"Jo, Jo I'm here!" she heard what sounded like his voice under her hand and she gaped as the dinghy was lifted out of the water to reveal a drenched Laurie under it. "Seems I got up on the wrong edge, that's all," he said taking her wrist as her legs tired from treading water. A moment later he'd tipped the boat the right way up and was helping Jo back into it when he told her, "that's the last time I try to kiss you – we almost drowned!"

Once he hauled himself over the edge he looked up to see Jo frowning sternly at him and he immediately regretted both the action and words.

"Laurie," she started and he knew he was in trouble just by his name, "we _are_ old and serious now." Jo's hand gripped the rim of the boat tightly; so much so he could see her knuckles turn white with the pressure. He couldn't meet her gaze knowing both the anger and pity in her grey eyes would set him against her without a second thought.

"I know."

"We're both grown up and married now. And _happy_."

"I know."

Laurie felt like the little boy who wrote love letter to Meg under someone else's name all over again and he folded his wet hands looking over the side of the boat. God he felt foolish.

"It was a silly mistake and I'm sorry for it." He apologised feeling cold and hot all at once covered in water under the sun. He picked up the wet oars tied to the boat and begun to row them back as Jo leant on her hand with her back to him. Maybe she would never really love him for the way he acted but he was sure she had started to kiss him back.

One thing was certain, whatever it was between them wasn't over.


	11. Comfort

He buried his face in her loose hair and was thankful, so desperately thankful that they had remained at least friends

Prompt 97: Comfort

He buried his face in her loose hair and was thankful, so desperately thankful that they had remained at least friends.

"Jo," he choked on her name as her hands made little circles across his back, between his shoulder blades and along his spine. It was so very wrong that he couldn't stop thinking about her movements when all he had really wanted was her solace.

"Shh," she hushed him quietly, tugging her hand through his curly hair comfortingly. She was so soft and so warm that he had almost, for one whole minute not thought of his grandfather.

He stood a little closer than before and held her just a little tighter, shutting his eyes and praying that she could take away the empty pit inside his stomach. That she could take away the constant ache his guardian had left behind.

Jo soothed and petted and he began to feel the knot in his stomach finally loosen. Laurie opened his eyes again to look at the candle burning to their left over Jo's work, the light flickering as it melted a particularly large lump of wax. He'd obviously disturbed her when he came over that afternoon, but night was falling fast and he hadn't wanted to spend this first night alone. He'd seen the light through the small window in the March's attic and he'd known what to do. Who he needed to see. She wasn't scribbling madly as Laurie had expected when he opened the door but staring off at the wooden wall behind the long desk and then at his house through the window that had beckoned him over in the first place.

He shook off the memory of Jo's expression as she watched his house, the pen he'd given to her several Christmases ago resting in her hands passively as her eyes sparkled with an emotion that wasn't anything near happiness. She'd known how to greet him when she saw him standing on the single step before the landing and Laurie pressed his forehead against hers now, glad that he hadn't lost her of all people.

Laurie closed his eyes as their noses brushed, her warm breath spreading across his face, in spite of the little shudder he felt from her under his palm. He was still in love with her, even after all the time that had passed and all the loved ones that had gone before their time. He was still in love with her and by the way she was gripping the shoulder of his vest he guessed that she might just be too.

With his eyes still shut he nudged her nose again and on hearing the little gasp of air that escaped her mouth he tilted his head and pressed his lips against hers. It was hesitant and light but the brush of their slightly open lips, the softness and _realness_ struck something in Laurie and he crashed his mouth back against hers with a vigour he thought he'd buried.

Jo's hands took flight again and he caught them fast as they shot off his shoulders, her eyes were wide but as he pressed them against the wood and brushed his tongue against hers she moaned, her hands gripping his for dear life until they crept up his arms and tugged him closer.

His hands alternated between threading through her long hair and pressing against her hips as he desperately savoured kissing the woman who hadn't pushed him away for the first time since he'd known her.

She smelt so clean and feminine without being the overly-sweetness he associated with Amy and the girls in France. His mouth traced down her neck and he revelled in being able to find a route he had wanted to try for such a long time. Hearing her sigh and her hips move when he kissed the hollow between her collarbones he moved back to her parted lips, pressing and nipping as she allowed him to explore her mouth, their skin roaring for more.

Jo's lips moved with his and he felt her eyelashes against his cheek tickle as they stood closely, Laurie pressing his hips against hers. He felt more alive than he had in five years and as her cool fingers touched his neck Laurie smiled the first real smile he'd given in such a long time.

Jo pulled back and watched his expression, the smile suddenly snapping her attention back to the situation she'd so completely lost herself in. She was serious when all he wanted to do was carry her off to the sofa that lay to their right and bury his sorrows behind them on the step he'd walked over into the garret when the sun went down that day.

Laurie leaned forward again but was stopped by her hand pressed between them and the frown that danced across Jo's face. He stepped back, looking to the sofa and across to the window through which he could see his house quiet in the dark, knowing he'd gone just a little too far if he warranted _that_ look from her.

She stood a little taller and a lot redder than before, pressing her now swollen lips together. "Laurie that – we shouldn't have…" he took her hands and stepped close again and with all his heavy breathing and dark eyes Jo quite forgot how to talk.

"Jo I've wanted you, wanted this for so long. Don't disappoint me," he wheedled, noting with pleasure her wavering glance to the side and the way she bit her lip. She couldn't say no now.

"Teddy it isn't right!" she said at last with the steady conviction of a pastor. "We don't suit each other, you're not well and –"

"And what Jo?" he had taken to pacing around the small room with her objectionable list and he stopped to look at her straight in the eye. "There's always something," Laurie accused before standing directly before her. "It is right, we're perfect for each other, and you make me feel…" his heart swelled looking at her lips and waiting grey eyes in the yellow light as he paused, "right."

"It isn't the right time."

His breath hitched knowing what she referred to and it took a moment before he could compose himself to answer her. "Maybe…" he started hoarser than before until she laced her fingers through his own and he had to manfully hold back a sob.

Jo was right. He was a mess, and he was making a mess of everything – messing around with his best friend's feelings no less! It came crashing back to him, all the reasons he was there in her garret at all, all the reasons that had brought him to that spot, having a woman hold his hand as his eyes began to sting from holding back tears and all the reasons he didn't want her to let go.

"God, I'm sorry Jo," his empty hand covered his eyes, "I'm so damned sorry."

It was only a brief moment until he could feel her arms around him, tightly wrapped around his middle. Jo held onto him tightly as he felt the first heavy drops of tears pass his futile lids and Laurie allowed himself to be held as he cried behind his hand in the March's attic.

"He was a beautiful man," Jo said quietly a long while after he'd spent all he could and she rubbed his back again like her mother would have. He took a deep breath, "Yeah, he was." And Jo closed her eyes at the earnest sound of his voice, knowing his grief would last longer than he would think.

Laurie tucked his chin over her shorter head that pressed against his chest, her arms still snug around him and he took a moment to commit the feeling to memory. So that when he was alone in his bed in the house his Grandfather had owned and given to him he would know what it felt like to have someone who loved him comfort him.

"Come on," she stepped away from the close embrace after a moment more and took his hand again, leading him to the sofa he had thought of not so innocently under an hour ago. They sat down together and Laurie was surprised to find Jo wrap her arms around him once more. The room was dark with the single candle glowing behind them and Jo's arms felt more secure than he thought was sensible for a woman's.

They talked and whispered and cried over his Grandfather with Jo still glued to his side until the candle had dimmed significantly and the room was as dark as the half-mooned night outside. Laurie's shoes had been kicked off some time ago and his arm had snaked its way around Jo's bony shoulders and he felt as at peace with the world as was possible for someone in his position. Jo had a great deal to do with it, he knew and he wondered if she would ever really understand the full extent of what she meant to him.

"Jo?" he asked, his eyes well-adjusted to the lack of light in the room.

"Hmm?" answered Jo and he could hear the exhaustion in her simple murmur. Her head shifted against his shoulder and her leg rubbed against his as they had tangled their limbs up earlier.

"Thank you," Laurie said quietly but sincerely. "You know, for this."

He felt her smile before she even told him that it was alright and there wasn't even really a need to thank her for she would think it silly. He smiled too until he felt her turn her head to look up at him and the light outside caught the edge of her eyes in the dark attic. She really was the most beautiful person he knew.

"And everything," Laurie added, even though she had told him off in a round about way for thanking her.

"Teddy, you're my dearest friend and I love you very much but there really is no need to go about this thanking business. I would do anything for you, you know that."

"What did you say?" he said breathily looking down at her as she pulled away to face him on the sofa.

"I would do anything for you," Jo repeated giving him an odd look.

"No dear, before that."

"What? That you're my dearest friend or that you shouldn't thank me, which I believe I've said three times now." She crossed her arms and he could see her eyebrow cock in the shallow light at the number of times she'd repeated something for him.

Laurie cleared his throat and finally clarified for her, "The bit about you loving me."

He swore she went a little red, he could tell even without the candlelight and Laurie played with the edge of her hem in front of him as he waited for her response.

"I…" Jo seemed to struggle with the words and he saw her pause to see his reaction to her fumbling. "I mean, of course I love you, we all love you Teddy, you should know that by now." Jo said matter-of-factly as she dismissed the notion he knew that she knew he was alluding to. Did their kiss earlier mean nothing to her?

Laurie stopped fiddling and turned to face her fully too, wondering whether he should take her folded hands when he asked her. "But how do you love me?"

Her face was very still but he seemed drawn to her and he leant forward, slowing to see if she would pull away or want what he did and as he gently pressed his mouth against hers he kept his eyes firmly on hers. A few seconds was all it took until her eyes slid shut and she kissed him back and Laurie felt a pressure release from his chest that he hadn't known was there. He was aware of her hand slowly rising in the air beside them and just as before he took it, feeling her fingers curl around his as the corners of their mouths met and his nose bumped hers softly in the dark.

A moan escaped the back of his throat when he slipped his other hand behind her on the cushions and they began to lean backwards, he over Jo as she stroked the side of his face fondly, their lips never losing touch.

Jo's head eventually reached the cushion and he flipped his hand under her to feel her hair only to pull back from kissing her when she let go of his hand and pushed his shoulder.

Laurie propped himself up so as not to crush her and the image of her lying beneath him, hair fanned out behind her as she looked up at him with her lips in one white line made him feel like his heart should break. Had he done something wrong?

Jo's hand was still on his cheek and her thumb absentmindedly stroked his skin as she looked ready to cry. "As a friend."

"What?"

She flinched under him at his bewildered tone and shell-shocked face hovering over her. She didn't want to break his heart all over again and Laurie could feel the panic welling in him.

Had he kissed her wrong? Had they moved to quickly? Didn't she feel what he felt when he kissed her? She had kissed him back! Twice!

Laurie sat up looking dumbfounded and he turned from her, folding his hands, his elbows resting on his knees as she slowly sat up too. It was very quiet and he knew Jo was struggling not to reach out to soothe him again. She'd done enough.

"Just a friend?" his head turned to her, disbelief evident in his tone and he watched her face scrunch up before looking at him with apology.

"I'm so sorry Teddy," she moved to hold him and he stood up abruptly.

He didn't want her pity!

"I can't believe… I can't – was everything a lie?" She stood up too as he asked her imploringly. "Was everything I felt – what I thought you felt a lie?" Jo looked so very sorry as she moved to him but he held his hand up to distance her. "Just answer me, Jo."

She hugged herself for a moment, "No! Of course it wasn't, Laurie you know it wasn't." He figured she meant his Grandfather.

"What was it then?" He felt like crying all over again but for a very different reason. "Were you just testing to make sure you really didn't love your boy by letting him think that you did? Is this how you treat all your friends Jo? I thought –" Laurie stopped, unsure whether to go on or to leave whilst he still had some little dignity. Before he cried.

Jo stepped closer as he warred with himself. "I love you," he told her at last, not sure if he was finishing his sentence or beginning a new one. Her eyes were damp and he fought with the half of him that made him want to stop before he hurt her as much as she hurt him.

"I know," she said with a watery voice that told him she really did despite her own feelings. "I love you too," she hugged him and he felt his heart climb up his throat as it began to fall into the pieces he thought he'd recovered since he rebuilt their friendship after Europe.

"No you don't. Not the way I do." His voice sounded dead to her in the lightless room.

He untangled her arms from his shoulders and pushed her aside, briefly wondering when she'd stopped being able to stand strong against him before he rolled up his sleeves and stood tall over her threateningly.

"So this is it," he made it sound more like a question than the summary he wanted. "This is the end Josephine March." Her brow was as crossed as his but her mouth hung open to answer him, to beg him to understand and Laurie steeled the final piece of his heart that urged him to stop and listen, the last bit that told him he would love her through everything and walked out of the garret, into the light of the corridor and down the stairs for what he told himself was the last time.

"TEDDY!" he heard her yell after him and as he took the stairs two at a time he could feel her scurry behind him, tears in her voice. "TEDDY," Jo was screaming his name now.

"Jo!" Amy appeared at the bottom of the stairs having come from the kitchen at the sound of her sister's voice. She saw Laurie coming down them and immediately she wiped her hands on her the apron tied around her waist to greet him. "Laurie!" she began to head for him but moved back when he looked up at her as he finally reached the last step.

Amy shrunk from the dark look in Laurie's eyes as he stalked out of the house, his hair askew and tie missing. She looked back up the stairs to see Jo, her hands on the banister and looking as wild as her their neighbour, mouth red on her upset face until she ran to her room and Amy heard the door lock.

She guessed what might have happened and as Amy wiped her hands on her apron one good last time she was certain whatever it was, she didn't like it.

…

Only Laurie would confuse comfort for sex lol. I was gonna make this all mushy and happy-ish ending and then I thought oh what the hey, I like to mess the way bloody L.M.A. did with us.

Oh and I figure I should clear up that this since this is a 100 challenge, not all of these stories link up – so they're pretty much all au and separate unless specified continuations. That's why it doesn't make much sense every time you hit that 'next chapter-y' button down in the corner.


	12. Danger

Jo pressed against him in the dark and wondered if it was right that she would want him to feel as dangerous as she did at that moment

Prompt 98: Danger

WARNING: this chapter is rated M for adult situations and my entirely unlike L.M.A. mind. You might like to skip if ye're a youngin.

…

Jo pressed against him in the dark and wondered if it was right that she would want him to feel as dangerous as she did at that moment. She wondered if that was a very Christian thought to begin with and then she rolled her eyes at herself, clutching the overhang of his white shirt tighter.

When she felt his lips on her neck she smiled at how silly she was. As if he didn't feel dangerous in the first place.

They were squashed within the little alcove made for an indoor plant at the top of the stairs in her father and mother's house, it was ten at night, a party was taking place beneath them and Jo was half-naked.

"How do you manage to smell like that?" he whispered heavily into her ear. Jo was craning her neck past the wall to see if anyone was in the stair well below and Laurie's head hung low against her bare collarbone.

"Like what?" she said distractedly, her hips unknowingly flush against his as she continued to see if anyone had spotted them.

His hands had slipped under her nightshirt and they began to move again, calling Jo's attention back to the man smiling at her all too Cheshire-like for her liking. Her eyebrows rose expectantly and he chuckled with that low vibration that made Jo tingle inside and out without her brain's permission.

"Like you've just rolled out of a wad of fresh paper, ducked your head in a pot of camellias and then baked forty ginger biscuits for your father?"

Jo laughed aloud, forgetting their predicament before he clamped a large hand over her thin, but very pretty mouth. He wondered if he told her what he thought of it would he get a whack on the head or something nice like an actual kiss. It was so rare for Jo to kiss him properly.

"So you _do_ want us to get caught?" he asked as if she hadn't shoved them into the alcove to avoid that very reason.

Jo rolled her eyes at him and shook her head until his hand moved from her mouth. Unfortunately it moved straight back to the waistband of her petticoat and she frowned at his trouble.

"Honestly," she started under her breath until she heard footsteps in the parlour downstairs. That would mean they would move from the dining area soon and ten or twelve relatives of hers would soon be passing through the room in which the stairs beside them reached. Suddenly the alcove didn't seem quite as secure a spot as she'd thought.

Laurie hadn't put any energy into finding a way out of the situation Jo knew. Certainly not by playing with the edges of her shirt and petticoat and brushing any bare skin he could find. He was incorrigible when it came to her humiliation and embarrassment.

"Are you quite alright?" she asked him in a stern whisper when his hands began to slip under her petticoat to her hips as he stood with the side of his forehead against hers, breathing quietly with his eyes shut.

"Mm-hmm," he replied trying very hard not to smile so she wouldn't hit him. He'd learnt quickly that if he was to get away with holding and caressing Jo he shouldn't mock her in any sense of the word. And that, unfortunately for him included teasing.

"We have to get out of here," Jo said, still whispering as she guessed that one of her aunts was walking about downstairs and too near the stairs. Jo turned back to look at Laurie who wasn't nearly as concerned as she and simply tugged her closer, appreciating the cramped space.

Jo mentally slapped herself for even imagining, just for a moment that he had been more innocent than her.

"What're you doing?"

Laurie grinned almost wolfishly as he leant forward and past her to inspect the scene himself. A moment later he pushed her out of the alcove, spun about and pushed them back in, this time cornering her against the wall as she was pushed in first.

"Laurie!" Jo admonished in a loud whisper that had anyone been near the stairs would have instantly heard. He simply continued grinning as he backed her flat against the wall until she could feel the cool, olive striped wallpaper against the back of her neck where her over-sized nightshirt left it exposed. "Te-"

He cut Jo off with a kiss that she immediately lost a fight over, pressing her as close as physically possible while his hands roamed under her pajamas until they couldn't breathe.

"Great!" she said sarcastically, knowing he'd really trapped them this time as she heard the seats moan and scratch against the floorboards downstairs signifying the migration of her family and friends into the sitting room. "Perfect! Fantastic!"

And Laurie was still smiling infuriatingly at her. She really wished she could put him in his place but the head-cold that had put her in this entire situation in the first place was unfairly re-emerging in full force. If she hadn't been sick, she wouldn't have slept through the arrival of their guests, then she would have been dressed and ready to see everyone.

But as it was, Amy had run upstairs to see her still in bed and unfit to be seen at all, in any circumstance – or so Jo was told. So she had struggled to get out of bed, get into a mood to see people and into the dress Meg had laid out when she had visited yesterday afternoon when all Jo could do was clutch her sore head.

Naturally Laurie had entered her room, without as much as a knock and a 'Jo, where are you?' before her caught her staring at the green dress he liked especially on her, wearing naught but her nightdress and underclothes.

Suddenly getting ready to see people didn't seem to be a problem as he suggested she climb back into bed if she really was unwell. Jo had smiled and thought it wonderful until he suggested that he climb in too and her head begun to ache once again.

He told her he wouldn't be missed for no one had seen him come up stairs but she pushed him towards the door, reminding him that they would have seen him enter the house at least. But Laurie had caught her arms and when she tried pushing him across the threshold of her bedroom she saw two of her cousins enter the foyer and panicked that they would see both herself and Laurie – two very inappropriate cases.

And that was how she had forced them into the previously empty alcove in which her neighbour was wantonly eyeing and feeling her up.

Laurie moved his hands to the round curves of her breasts under her shirt and he leaned forward again when her face changed from frustration to the wide-eyed look he was remarkably good at eliciting. Jo shifted in the small space and he stepped between her legs, pressing kisses against her earlobe and temple.

"Not fair," she mumbled when his thumb crossed the pink peaks shielded from his corrupting eyes by her white nightshirt and her hips somehow pressed closer to his.

"You should know by now I don't play like that," he told her in a voice that sent her mad inside. He rarely used it but when he did it was as spring to tulips and she tilted her face to meet his lips with force in the dark little space she would never associate with rubber plants and ornaments again.

There was a great shuffle and hum of people whose noise carried upstairs but still Laurie's hands stayed glued to her and Jo's mouth moved against his fiercely, her temper and headache all culminating and diminishing within the one kiss until she had to draw breath in fear of passing out.

Jo felt him pressed against her below and the ruddiness of her cheeks from her sneezing yesterday returned at the thought of what she could conjure in him. She wondered if she would ever stop being surprised by the ferocity of their relatively newfound love, what he did to her, what she inspired him to do and how it all amassed into a madness that threatened her very sanity.

She was kissing him above the stairs in her nightclothes as her family passed beneath!

Her forehead rested against his as she smiled at the odd situation. A year ago she would never even imagine such an even ever occurring to her but since she had let him kiss her behind the old tree with the swing whose branches crossed the hedge between their houses, Jo found herself in places and doing or saying things she hadn't expected.

It was liberating and it almost made up for the four years it took for her to consider she had loved Laurie.

Laurie was kissing her neck and collarbone again, as he was want to do when particularly pleased with the way things were moving and Jo found her leg had moved to sit around his waist when she felt his hand travel along the back of her thigh.

"Teddy," she sighed quietly, feeling his blunt nails brush over her breast and her hands disappeared under his vest. A moment later she had unbuttoned his shirt and her fingers ran through the frighteningly light layer of curly hair on his chest as he played with the waistband of her petticoat again, wandering hands curving lower than what Jo would usually allow.

Jo keenly listened past their heavy breathing and the sound of Laurie sucking the skin at her shoulder that he had kissed two days beforehand for the scramble of relatives below but it sounded as they had all passed the stairs.

It was at that moment that Jo felt the familiar flood of pressure behind her nostrils and sting in her eyes that signified she was about to sneeze. "Oh no," she said quickly before sneezing louder than she had expected, making Laurie snap from his dazedly look into panic. They both stilled, moving to stand as close as possible to the wall without any sound as they listened for a sign of a curious relative.

As was their luck one old, very snappish voice rang out, "Josephine?"

Jo cringed and Laurie tried to smoother a smile at her facial expression as she clutched his still-open shirt in the horror that her aunt would hunt them out. There was a clumsy shuffle downstairs and Jo's ears panicked at the sound of lace and layered skirts fumble about the foyer.

A moment or two later they finally heard her voice in the sitting room, smothered by a good wall three inches thick and the pair relaxed. Jo felt Laurie laugh silently as his head rested against hers and she cracked a smile too until she clamped her own hand over her mouth this time, desperately trying to stop herself from bursting out with the thought of Aunt March finding them as such.

"I thought we were gone for good," Jo told him in a whisper when her fit for giggling had passed. Her hands were against his bare back under his shirt and he smiled charmingly at her before he croaked out, "Josephine, is that you?"

She smacked him on the arm for his apt impersonation before smiling again, the relief still evident in her posture. They had come so close to being caught, and by one of the worst people too that Jo had felt like the most awful bit was over and began to kiss Laurie again, smiling when he sighed happily, bumping her head against the wall again as he nudged closer.

His hands crept around to her back and she kissed his jaw, running her fingers over his chest and pinching his nipples enough to make him moan terrifically in her ear as he pushed his hips against hers. Jo felt how pleased he was and was unsurprised when he began to lift her shirt over her head, stopping only to untie her braided hair before he dumped the shirt on their feet.

Laurie kissed her leisurely and Jo lifted her leg around his waist again as his warm hands covered her breasts generously so that when she bucked into him it benefited both.

"This is…" she began, her breathing hitched as he moved back to her waist and his chest brushed hers, his skin heated and hard against her softness.

"Amazing?" Laurie offered quietly between kisses. "Torturous? Emancipating?"

"Insanely dangerous," Jo settled and smiled when he parted her lips and kissed her open-mouthed and roughly in the corner above the stairs.


	13. Spider

"Laurie

Prompt 22: Enemies

I can't wait to have a boyfriend or other manly creature for this very thing.

…

"Laurie!" she said in a panic as she stood on his feet, her arms somewhere behind his head. She was scanning the floor madly with her eyes and he had to hold back a laugh at the look on her face.

"Where is it? Where'd it go?"

"Jupiter Ammon, Jo!" he patted her back but didn't ask her to get off as he began to move about the room for something to hit the spider she'd spotted twelve or so minutes ago. As it was 'a dirty great big one' he reached for the paper that lay on the table end by the March's old sofa only to find when he lifted it up, their furry enemy was lying in wait beneath.

"Oh God!" Jo cried heretically as she scrambled from in front of Laurie to hiding behind him. The black spider, which was as large as Jo had called it to Laurie's surprise scuttled off, frightened from the exposure as Laurie lifted his hand, armed with newspaper to squat it.

"Rats," he said unhelpfully as it disappeared under the flimsy table cloth. Jo's fingers were digging into his back and he turned his head to frown at her. "You trying to bust me open Miss Jo?"

"Sorry," she said simply and curled her hands together by her chest as she returned to watching where the spider was last seen, making Laurie wish he hadn't said anything. Her eyes were wide and face flushed and Laurie found himself highly distracted as the creature reappeared and made a run for the sofa.

"Ah! Look! There!" Jo cried pointing at the spider that began to head under the seat cushions. Laurie dived after it, feeling a little sorry that he was going to have to kill the spritely thing if just to keep Jo's peace of mind. He lifted the cushion up and aimed quickly before thwacking at the big black thing.

Stunned by only one mostly-missed shot it teetered to the side and worked its way under the next cushion to Jo and Laurie's disappointment.

"For heaven's sake!" Jo had her fists against her head and was pacing behind him, clearly wishing the thing would just be taken care of and die, out of her sitting room and out of their house filled with dark corners and hiding spots.

"It's just a spider, Jo."

"Just a spider'? Didn't you see the size of that thing?"

Laurie couldn't stop from smiling that time and he scratched his back with the paper looking a little foolish for what he would say next. "Sure you wouldn't like to give it a go?"

Jo hit him as expected and he laughed as she pelted him with her small fist again for the suggestion. "It's not funny!" she told him, still whacking him on the shoulder as he clutched his belly still chuckling at her expression.

"Alright, alright!" Laurie threw up his hands in surrender and tried vainly to straighten his face before he went to find the spider again, Jo's hands holding the little tails of his vest.

"This time don't miss."

Laurie threw a look over his shoulder that wasn't nearly as serious as he would have liked before he gently picked up the cushion they had seen it burrow under. Slowly he lifted it, ready to see the black creature waiting again but as he peeled it back the familiar shape was gone.

"Oh no," he could feel Jo's fist curl under the edge of his vest and he turned his head to her looking very sorry.

"What is it?" she said tentatively, knowing she wouldn't like what Laurie was going to say.

"Uhh," he paused unsure how to break it to her that he'd lost the spider and it was very likely still alive and running about somewhere unknown in the room. He was going to be hit again, he knew it. "You see –"

Jo peered past his shoulder to under the cushion and her face changed all too quickly. "You lost it!?" She hit his back and Laurie smiled sheepishly as he replaced the cushion and she stood with her hands on her waist looking very mad with him.

"Don't be upset!" he said raising his hands to calm her. "I'm sure it's around here somewhere. I'm sure I can find it."

"You'd better Theodore Laurence."

She spun him around and prodded him in the back until he started walking forward to find the spider. Jo was not pleased to say the least and the only way he would redeem himself would be finding and ending the creature so Laurie dutifully ducked his head under and around the objects of the room.

Suddenly Jo wasn't following him anymore and he stood from his position half-crawled under the coffee table in the corner of the room to find her staring at the wall by the window in horror.

"Found it," she said quietly, stepping away from the wall to stand closer to his side that carried the newspaper rolled up.

"Well then," Laurie marched forward and hit the spider which fell until it regained its balance and sat a little lower on the wall. Jo had unwittingly yelled when it moved and Laurie struggled to remain focused on the poor black arachnid that stood as still as possible, hoping that the tall man couldn't see him.

Laurie raised the paper one final time and hit it square on the head, watching it fall to the grown with a frown, feeling Jo's hair fall across his shoulder as she leaned over to inspect the creature.

"It don't look so big anymore," she said a little sadly and Laurie looked at her in their half-crouched shape hoping he hadn't killed it for nothing. Jo was still frowning at it with her hands clutching his arm and shoulder and he wondered if she realised just how close she was standing to him as she kept her eyes clamped on the dead spider in case it moved again.

"I'm glad it's gone though," Jo said finally, leaning closer to his face to kiss his cheek quickly before taking off for a jar to carry it outside.

Laurie was still hunched over as he watched her go through the door into the kitchen, his skin tingling and his heart beating just a little faster than it had when he'd aimed for the spider curled by the skirting board.


	14. Club

Jo sat nursing the vodka and orange Laurie had gotten her half an hour ago watching, or glaring she couldn't tell anymore, as he danced with her sister

Prompt 49: Club

WARNING: m rated again – alcohol, passing mention of drugs and a lot of kissing.

Don't worry, I hate the club too Jo.

…

Jo sat nursing the vodka and orange Laurie had gotten her half an hour ago watching, or glaring she couldn't tell anymore, as he danced with her sister. Her eyes narrowed in response as he winked at her over Amy's particularly unclad shoulder.

She turned away, hoping that she didn't look like the loser she felt, watching her boyfriend with her sister and instead she disinterestedly watched the pathetic roll of music clips that flashed across the screen hooked up for god knows what reason. Jo was pretty sure the people around her were more interested in the grind-and-bump of the music more than the try-hard gangstas with their virtually naked women lip-syncing to the songs their producers wrote during a high.

Man, she really hated the club.

Someone bumped into her from behind and Jo turned to see a girl wearing something that looked suspiciously like an over-sized handkerchief loosely wrapped around her middle teeter to the side with a cruiser in one hand and some leering stranger in the other.

"Oh brother," she mumbled turning back to her 'vorange' as the tipsy girls at the table beside her proclaimed it to be. Vodka always left a bad aftertaste but the warm feeling through her limbs in the late cold night made it worth it. And going to the club became just a little more bearable.

She was going to have to say some very sharp words to Laurie when they got home if she didn't want to end up in the same spot this time next week. Surely there were more important things to do. Like sleep.

Jo rested her head on her propped up hand and spun the straw about the plastic cup, watching the slowly melting ice swivel and bump against each other. Not unlike Laurie and Amy she thought sourly as she took another sip through the small black straw, her eyes darting without her permission towards the couple through the glass.

Laurie was still watching her, even when Amy twisted a little lower; pressing against his chest and making Jo feel a little queasier than what her small drink warranted. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of looking back to that intense gaze he only seemed to use with her so she looked back towards the beach, cold and lifeless in the twelve-o'clock dark.

The ocean wind had picked up again and Jo glared at it for good measure as she took another sip of the drink she didn't even really like. Why they had come to New York for the weekend was beyond her, especially when they had come straight from uni that day and all Laurie had said was a brief 'hello how are you?'

Maybe it was her own fault, Jo mused as the song changed to one she actually recognised but still didn't like. She hadn't exactly kept close contact with him throughout the week, choosing to do her required readings and cross off the days before her final exam instead of calling him or going on the net.

Jo felt awkward on phones anyway.

She clutched her drink a little closer as a couple making out beside her lost their footing, bumping into the cold metal table she sat at. Maybe she was doing it wrong or wasn't what Laurie needed, as she'd told him before he'd gone overseas three years ago because they certainly didn't kiss like that.

In fact she wasn't sure she voluntarily kissed him ever.

"Oh god," Jo cupped her forehead in her hands as she realised what an awful sort of girlfriend she was. It was no surprise that he was inside the club dancing with her sister when she hadn't even wanted to come in the first place. It was no wonder he'd suggested they'd spend some time closer to Amy, who she rarely got to see anymore since the girl had moved out after high school.

He hadn't stopped talking about her last weekend when he came over and Jo had thought at the time he was just trying to cheer her up when she was moping over the loss of her sisters whom she never saw anymore. But looking back, and looking over through the glass at the way Amy's arms encircled his neck Jo wondered why she hadn't seen his enthusiasm for the subject for what it was.

But Laurie was leaning his head towards Amy's ear and he hadn't stopped looking at Jo. She wondered what it meant for her sister to be in this mess. Did Laurie like her for her or was it because she was her sister? Did she even care?

Jo looked back to her drink feeling sick again and took the straw out, downing the rest in one go. It tasted disgusting but at least she wasn't thinking about those two for a few seconds as she tried to keep the drink in her stomach not her mouth. Half of her friends didn't drink and it was moments like these that revealed to her why.

"Hey babe," someone sat next to her and Jo blinked at them, not recognising the man or why he would be addressing her as such.

"Are you right?" she asked hostilely as he saddled up closer, reeking of bourbon and rum. She wondered what he damn well thought he was doing because she clearly didn't fit in – she wasn't even near drunk and she wearing a sloppy-joe and jeans for pete's sake! "Maybe you should try them." Jo suggested, pointing at the gaggle of girls over the pool tables under the awning.

"But I like you," he said decisively and Jo wondered if under his stubbled, gelled blonde hair exterior he was mentally retarded. If he wanted a woman he should have paid the extra five dollars and gone into the club instead of lurking in the beer garden.

Someone cleared their throat behind Jo and the boy in front of her looked up from where he was leaning too close to instantly back off. Jo looked behind her to see who chased off the guy and was unsurprised to find Laurie.

"Back to claim your meat?" she mumbled as she picked up the empty cup, crushing it in her hand and stood to find a bin, only to be dragged back down when he took the now empty seat beside her.

"Pardon?"

She hated that one had to virtually yell in these places to be heard.

"Nothing. Never mind."

But she knew he'd somehow heard her because he frowned at the empty cup and the foul look on her face as she tried to avoid his gaze, looking back into the club. He was sitting astride the bench and looking fairly serious but she couldn't turn herself back to him. Jo didn't want to do this here.

"I'm sorry Laurie, go back and enjoy yourself."

"Will you at least look at me before you dismiss me?" His large hand was on her arm and she wondered if she was as bony as Amy had looked without all the warm clothes she usually wore. Jo's eyes travelled from his warm hand to his face and he shuffled closer until she could feel his warm breath through the cool outside air.

They sat silently together that way for a while, unsure whether the following words would be insults or apologies as was their usual messy way. Jo hated that they misunderstood each other so frequently but when they sat this way or when he kissed her behind her hand she knew she didn't want it any other way.

"Jo," his thumb stroked her cheek as she began to look upset under the gas light and myriad of colours that jumped sporadically across her face from the club. She seemed to take a few deep breaths as she bit her lip before she looked at him again.

"You done then?" she asked and Laurie nodded, knowing she meant the club. Jo nodded too and stood silently, taking his hand when he joined her and she lead them out of the beer garden, smiling at the large security guys as they stood with their hands folded in front and wished them a safe night.

She even smiled at the girls who whistled at Laurie as they passed by the garden to the taxi stop a hundred or so metres away.

"Better now?" he asked noting her improved mood and the confident way she gripped his hand as they crossed the street, avoiding the group of very drunk men stumbling towards the club they came from.

"Remarkably," she said smiling at him and he wondered what she would do if he stopped them in front of the closed take-out store and kissed her. Jo squeezed his hand again and stepped closer to walk in time with him and he smiled at the odd ways she showed him she cared.

They piled into the cab and Jo settled her head on Laurie's shoulder, watching the tall buildings pass as the taxi took them to the cheap hotel they were staying at. She had been so ready to tell him to go to Amy if he wanted, to tell him that she clearly wasn't working out for him and to end it. She wondered if it was healthy for her to go through so many emotions in one night because the way he smelt and the way she could feel his cheek on top of her head she was sure she was going to feel more before they got to bed.

The taxi pulled up at the block and Jo shoved the money through the driver's window, pleased that Laurie didn't try to stop her. They walked up the small steps into the building, Jo pushed the key into the button for the elevator and stood back, liking that Laurie simply locked his arm through hers as they waited.

The lift chimed and they stepped in, Jo put the key in her sweater pocket and enjoyed the confined unwatched space which allowed them to lean back against the wall comfortably. Laurie's scent filled her nostrils and she thought it was a crime for a man to smell so much better than any lady she ever met especially as it did things to her head.

Suddenly she wasn't leaning against the wall anymore but stood directly in front of him with hooded eyes as she ran her fingers down the expensive shirt he wore, liking how the cool material slinked through her fingers. She reached his belt and leant forward, her eyes sliding shut as Laurie met her half-way and kissed her.

It wasn't sweet but it wasn't rough and Jo enjoyed the way his nose inhaled sharply when her fingers ran behind his waistband, his lips still stuck to hers. Laurie's hands were on the back of her jeans and he tugged her closer as the lift shuddered to a halt and the door opened with a clang on their floor.

Blindly they stumbled out of the lift, Jo's hands cupping his face as she considered how glad she was she hadn't spoken in the moment at the club, his teeth bumping against hers and fingers searching for the key in her pocket.

Jo lifted her arms around his neck, quashing the memory of her sister doing the same earlier when he unlocked the door and pushed them through, lips moving from hers to her neck as they crashed into the wall.

"So, is this what you envisioned when you decided to drive us up for the weekend?" she asked out of breath when his teeth scraped her collarbone as he kicked the door behind them shut. Jo felt him laugh against her skin before he came up and pecked her on the lips, shrugging slightly.

"A little."

She smiled at his artlessness and took his hand again until they reached the bed, the only piece of furniture in the small room aside from a bedside table and two uncomfortable looking chairs.

She sat down on it, still holding his hand, unable to stop smiling as he tried to kiss her again. "You wanna talk about tonight?" Jo asked as he continued to lean closer to her before collapsing on the bed beside her.

"You do," he said, an arm over his eyes before he looked at her with an expression that told her 'I-know-you'. He was silent however and the way his eyes held her made Jo sigh before she fell back onto the bed next to him.

"I only wanted us to get out for a bit, you know, for once," he said at length without any sense of bitterness or as a joke. Jo nodded, turning her head away from him and looking at the stock watercolour painting that attempted to decorate the bland white wall.

Laurie took her hand and she felt him play about with her fingers as she continued to watch the simplistic picture of the city. The room was cooler than what she usually liked and Laurie's warm digits were a great comfort as her other hand lay over her stomach. Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut altogether.

Things had been going so well. For once.

"And Amy was already heading out there and since we came up to see her I figured…" Laurie's fingers were touching her fingertips when she finally turned to look at him again, the mention of her sister igniting thoughts she had wanted to blame on the vodka when they'd gotten into the taxi.

He felt Jo staring at him and look back, letting her hand fall to his chest as he waited for her to say what she clearly wanted to say.

"Teddy," she swallowed and he hoped she wasn't going to break up with him. Every time she used his name with that voice he prayed that she wasn't going to think they were a mistake. "Are you in love with Amy?"

"What?" Laurie sat up looking at her in shock. "Are you kidding? Where did that come from?"

Jo bit her lip and sat up beside him, fidgeting with her hands as she looked at the bedside table. "You know," she began slowly hinting, "I thought that –"

"Well you thought wrong!" Laurie cut her off sounding stern and a little hurt that she would think he would use her for her sister. "I can't believe this, Jo. You thought – God! I love _you_!"

She met his eyes at the fierceness of that statement and his crossed brow and hurt eyes did everything to make her feel horribly wrong and terribly guilty about it. The air became unbearably awkward as Jo struggled with wondering whether she should touch him or let him cool off.

Laurie eventually stood up and walked across the small length of the room, a hand in his hair and one on his waist. He looked as lost as she felt and Jo knew she'd overstepped some mark he'd made in his head and it was going to take a lot for her to make it up to him. Had she just ruined it for them both?

"I'm sorry Teddy," she said almost in a whisper, her head in her hands as he came to a stop in front of her. She really had a way of screwing things up for them when everything was going well. Maybe her mother was right, maybe they just wouldn't make it work, no matter how much they invested into the relationship. Maybe they should have just stayed best friends and left it at that.

She felt his hands rest on her arms and she looked up to find him kneeling in front of her. He didn't look angry just very tired and she wondered if he was going to forgive her the quickest he ever had because he was leaning forward and brushing his forehead against hers. She heard him breath deeply and thought that it wasn't fair that she could accuse him and he would forgive her when he would want to go out and she couldn't forgive him.

"Where did this come from?" he asked her evenly again.

"You were dancing and…"

"But you've never minded before!" He watched her expression wondering if she had and never told him. He'd never known Jo to be jealous over him ever in the seven years he'd known her and he found it surreal to be having this conversation in another state in a motel he'd organised last minute.

"No," she confirmed. "But you've been talking about her and brought us here and I haven't been around and…" she stopped her flow of excuses knowing that she had been talking about Amy just as much and that she had been the one to agree to coming here and it was her own damned fault for not being with him when she could.

Laurie moved to take her hands, his face serious as he sat back and asked her, "Is it… is it because you don't love me?"

Jo looked at him surprised. Did he think she was trying to break it off with him? Did he think she was just making up a reason to tell him she didn't want him? Jo didn't know what to say, she had been so sure before he left to Europe after High School that she didn't love him the same way he loved her that she'd broken his heart. She guessed he was wondering what was stopping her from doing it a second time and Jo realised that deep down she had never intended to have him leave her or her he ever.

Unsure what to do she closed the gap between them and kissed him. Her hands sunk into his curly hair and she tried to convey how much she really cared for him in the first time she hadn't waited for him to finish the pause before she kissed him. Jo pushed and pulled and teased his mouth open until she couldn't breathe and sat back on the bed properly, fingering the ends of his hair fondly.

"You're an idiot if you think I don't love you by now."

Laurie moved up and caught her lips again, resting a hand beside her on the bed as he leaned over her and kissed her intensely, pushing her further back onto the bed until they both laid flat across it. His hands alternated from touching her face reverently to resting under her breast as he made certain that she knew that he knew. And he was so goddamn thankful.


	15. Birthday

Prompt 91: Birthday

Prompt 91: Birthday

Jo awoke to the feeling of someone watching her. Sliding one lid open she looked over to her left to see a very excited hulk of a man propped up beside her, grinning from ear to ear.

"Guess what day it is!" he asked, shaking her sluggish arm until she opened both eyes and glared.

"Go on! Guess!" Laurie was still smiling, his eyebrows high and eyes shining with what Jo thought was too much enthusiasm for the hour in the morning.

"Oh really, you're no fun anymore Jo" he said when met with silence once more, his face starting to fall.

"Alright, alright," she croaked, reaching a limp hand to pet his hair fondly. "What day is it?"

Laurie bit back a grin before leaping off the bed and disappearing from her vision. "What?" she grumbled confused by the young man's behaviour. It really was too early to be dealing with his little mysteries.

Jo rolled over and tucked her hand under her head, quite ready to fall asleep again when Laurie bounded back into the room thrusting a wooden box out to her yelling, "Happy Birthday!"

"Oh God!" Jo swore as she sat up in bed, clutching her heart in shock. Laurie laughed and plonked himself beside her shoving the box in her free hand, showing no mercy after the shock he'd given her.

"What is wrong with you?" she punched him tiredly in the arm, fighting back a grin for his happy thoughtfulness. "Feels like your birthday for all the fuss," Jo smiled lightly with rosier-than-usual cheeks at Laurie. She didn't know what it was with him and birthdays but he had a habit for being the loudest most joyful participant of the day.

"Thank you," Jo said lifting the box without opening it, feeling if she said it off-handedly she could swallow the sentiment she felt rising with his steady look. She lifted the lid with her long fingers still stained with last-night's ink and found a coloured glass jar filled with nibs of different styles, some for calligraphy others for finer work. Jo smiled, deeply touched by the gift.

"Is it…" Laurie hesitated, playing with the bed sheets in one hand. "Is it alright?"

Jo looked up at him, the beginnings of tears in her eyes and Laurie received his answer in a bone-crushing hug from his wife.


	16. Rain

Prompt 66: Rain

Prompt 66: Rain

I have approx. 35 mins until my birthday ends and im sure as hell gonna fill it with Jo/Laurie yummyness. Wouldn't you?

…

Jo grinned even as she felt the water drip into her mouth, her fingers getting caught in the knots at the end of his soaked hair. He was beautiful even when he had to keep blinking to stop the rain from blurring his vision causing her to think of Amy's lady friends behind their oriental fans.

"It was worth it," she admitted, even as her skin shuddered with the cold, her clothes heavy and legs feeling as if she'd rolled in the mud for the past hour.

"I'm glad!" he laughed a bit, tightening his hold around her waist, liking the way Jo's cheeks coloured from his warm breath. "Maybe I should lose books more often."

Jo lowered her head feeling a little guilty. If she hadn't tugged his scarf when he turned about by the bend to see the storm clouds swell over the river Laurie might have kept his balance and book. But teasing had always been mutual and standing with Jo in the open air as the rain tried its vainest to drench every inch of them, Laurie thought it wasn't so bad.

Jo's hands moved to sit behind his neck and he smirked at the sudden way her confidence disappeared, her eyes moving from the mud at their feet to the fence by the side of the road. Her face was red and Laurie guessed that it wasn't just from the cold for when he shuffled a little closer her eyes slid shut and she frowned steadily at their feet.

"It's going to take days to clean this off," he stated ambiguously, coaxing Jo to look up at him quickly to see what he meant. Laurie gestured with his eyes at their lower halves, black and brown from the dirty collapse they shared earlier and just as she smiled; rolling her eyes in understanding he swooped in and kissed her.

Jo hit him in the chest pretty fast but Laurie pulled back only for a second or two before trying again, this time pulling her closer as his hot mouth began to warm her lips. Jo was pulling at his jacket, intending to make him stop until Laurie's touch softened, deepening when she parted her mouth and suddenly she was clutching to him and kissing him back.

"Jo," he murmured under the pelting rain as he took her thin face in his hands and kissed her over and over, feeling more warm inside than he ever had as her long fingers intertwined in his hair once again.

"What are we doing?" Jo said minutes later, feeling snapping to her hands and limbs and she pulled away from her friend quickly. Everything was wrong, Jo felt, hugging herself as the rain continued to expand the puddles at her feet. One moment they were walking home from town, the next Laurie had lost his book. Then they had gone to finding it to kissing and somewhere between it had started raining and showed no signs of stopping.

Laurie was frowning, looking more and more like one of her sister's kittens when they dropped into the bath. Jo put her hands in her now-see-through pockets, the material clinging to her shaking hand as she tried desperately not to look at his expression.

"I thought you liked it," he offered.

"I did!" she turned to him, going red when she realised what she'd said. "I mean I shouldn't. Wait, no I mean that it's not right I…" Jo put a hand on her forehead feeling like everything was all too much and she peeled Meg's ruined bonnet off her head wanting to breathe.

Laurie stepped towards her, feeling encouraged before he stopped and took the bonnet from her silently wishing she'd just see how much he cared and fall into his arms again.

"Which is it?" he asked her over the din.

"I –" Jo looked up into his hopeful face dripping with water and felt the weight of all his emotions as his black eyes held hers. She tugged the ends of his soaked grey jacket carefully, "I love you Teddy. But I just –"

He smiled throwing her hat over the fence beside them leaning forward to kiss her lightly. This time it was different, Jo's mouth still waiting to finish her sentence worked softly against his, pressing and caressing wholly without her permission as his hand wandered from her cheek to her hip, bringing her closer. It was young and earnest and she knew instantly she could never say 'no', not when her heart was beating against the pound of heavy raindrops that fell on their heads and the world seemed to surge with the brush of Laurie's hand against her stomach.


	17. Red

Prompt 11: Red

WARNING: m for language and Laurie being suggestive.

…

"AHH! GOD!" broke the silence of the small flat. "BLOODY FUCKING HELL! You stupid fucking piece of trash; I hate you!"

Laurie's head shot up with the sound of Jo yelling in the kitchen and he ran over to see what had caused the girl to swear viciously. Jumping over the couch he skidded into the hall to see her kicking the dishwasher with a red face.

Unsure what to say he stood there silently watching his girlfriend abuse the machine until she kicked too hard and hurt her toe. "Jo…" he approached carefully, hoping she wouldn't take a swing at him in her rage as she had 'accidentally' done many times growing up. "What happened?"

Jo turned in a hop to face him, cradling her hand and balancing on one leg, her face scrunched up in anger and pain all at once. She looked like she had fallen down a flight of stairs for all her injuries.

"That," she spluttered for the appropriate adjective, "confounded machine hates me!" Laurie couldn't stop a smile for the way she wouldn't swear around him and stepped closer to take her hand for examination.

"Ow ow!" Jo yanked her hand back, frowning at his lack of care with her sore fingers. "Don't come any closer, you'll make it worse." Laurie sighed in frustration at her attitude and before he could apologise she was hopping around the kitchen to the kettle, flicking the switch on with her good hand.

"How on earth can you think of coffee when you're clearly in pain and just spent the past five minutes kicking the crap out of our dishwasher?" Laurie moved towards her with his hands on his hips, disbelief clear on his face.

Jo waved him off, her back still turned as she hobbled for the beans in the jar by the fridge.

"Would you please stop so I can help you?" he asked.

"Don't need it. 'M fine," she said through gritted teeth, struggling to open the screw lid with one jarred hand. Jo was the most stubborn woman he knew but it didn't stop him from putting a hand on her shoulder and taking the jar from her helpless hands.

"For pity's sake," Laurie grumbled under his breath, sitting on the table in the middle of the cramped room as he opened the jar for her. "You're hopeless you know that?"

He passed the coffee jar back to her, seeing her frowning unimpressed with him wearing her best glare that she reserved just for him. Laurie laughed at her and stood to give her a hug which she pushed off, heading back for the boiling kettle with a limp he had a hard time not laughing harder over.

"Honestly Jo," she could hear the smile through his voice, "you should see yourself."

She dumped the jar on the counter and turned around to face him, leaning against the bench with her hand gingerly on her hip and jaw clenched.

"You're all red, insufferably stubborn with a possible broken toe and hand and…" Laurie moved close until his large hands rested against her hips, one gently covering her sore fingers, "easily my most favourite person in the world."

He smiled before leaning in and kissing her softly but soundly, pressing harder when he heard a moan escape the back of her throat and her good hand crept up his neck. A moment or two later after much enjoyment on both parts he pulled back and looked down into her face which had turned a red matching her hand.

"Now let's take a look at those fingers before you punch me for picking you up and taking you to bed."


	18. Inside

Prompt 4: Insides

Prompt 4: Insides

Ack I am so over being cold and writing this blooming essay on freakin Macbeth and Paradise Lost I am taking a break (my second today). This should teach me not to start essays 2 days before they're due, but I thought it was better than the usual day-before thing I have going on. Can't believe I'm only bloody 1/3rd of the way done. Anyway, onto the jo/laurie and away from the approaches to English literature.

This one is linked to the 'Club' one a few chapters ago what with the 'kissing behind her hand' line or something. I kinda liked this 'verse with modern uni Laurie and Jo coz it brightens my rl one fo shiz. So I apologise if you don't and you prefer the usual 19th c as I usually do.

Oh and credit goes where it is due to Alydia Rackham's _Without Him_ and the mention of Jo's books especially the bible quote. Real inspiring. And my beloved Josh Pyke's pretty pretty music that's keeping my head on my shoulders and not on the keyboard. I've rambled enough now.

…

They were inside and it was dark and cool. Laurie was bent over the desk to her right, his hand writing madly in fear of the thoughts escaping before they reached the paper. This was the last time she was going to come over when he had an essay due the following day.

"You know next time you might think about starting earlier," Jo said hoping to get a rise out of him but he was absorbed with whatever the topic was and she turned back to the bible that sat on her knees. It was never really the most thrilling of books to read but it was definitely the one special book that she kept close to her heart. Laurie had often teased her about it and she'd rewarded him one time too many with a thump on the head with it.

She whistled quietly to herself as she read through the Psalms for the third time that morning, liking how someone so long ago had loved someone she loved so eloquently and she could read about it sitting in a study with a hundred books with no God.

It really was a beautiful study though, Jo thought, looking up at the rich tones of brown with threaded reds, greens and golds throughout the wood and book bindings. Laurie had the best of everything at his grandfather's and it reminded her of his university with the tall sandstone walls and ancient-looking courtyards. Hers was so different but she loved it all the same, the seventies exteriors and sleeping students on the acreage about the cluster of buildings making her feel at home.

Laurie suddenly slammed down his pen and kicked back his chair, a yawn stretched across his face as he scratched the back of his neck. Jo looked over at him smiling at how quickly he returned to himself, glaring at the sheets of paper he'd spent the past hour working on.

"Come on," he said jumping out of his chair and walking over to her. "Study break," he picked up Jo's hand and pulled her out of the lounge, ignoring the bible that fell off her knees and dragged her out of the room and headed for the garden.

"Well aren't we polite?" she noted as he tugged her through the house, across the polished floors and the rug she'd always secretly desperately wanted to roll about on. He squeezed her hand and continued to head for the front door, thrusting it open before he breathed deeply and dramatically. Jo rolled her eyes, smiling at how lighter he seemed as he pulled her out into the sunny yard.

"Do you know you really are a terrific study buddy, Jo dear?" he asked affectionately, dropping her hand to squeeze her shoulder as the ambled to the fence between their houses. "Really, you are!" he said when she sent him a look.

"Yeah well you wouldn't be so bad yourself if you did anything on time."

"Please," he began dismissively, holding the gate open for her, "you know I'm the brains trust of this affair." Jo hit him in the stomach and he smiled, clutching it in mock pain. "Cruel mistress! Slave-driver!"

"Keep it down or my sisters will come out and plague you til you run back to that essay." Jo hushed him, leading him to the back of the house. Laurie still grinned goofily behind her, winking to Beth who he saw watching them from the window by her piano.

Laurie walked leisurely behind Jo, enjoying the way she marched ahead with her hands in her pocket watching the sky for rain clouds or anything to mar his break. She really was the best friend he ever had and he couldn't have been happier if he tried.

Quietly he crept closer and tugged her braid, laughing when she lashed out reflexively, punching him in the gut again. "Ow,ow!" He laughed, doubling over as she pelted him with fists "I surrender!" Jo gave him one last good thump before collapsing on the ground beside him, her face set like stone as he smiled widely at her, taking her hand once more.

"Isn't this nice?" he asked, leaning back in the long grass, the shade of the big tree in her backyard creeping over his long legs. Laurie squeezed her hand until Jo fell back beside him too, shielding her eyes from the sun with an arm over her face. He could tell she was smiling too from the way her cheeks sat high against her sleeve and he relaxed, ridding his mind of politics and patriotism.

He really did love every minute he spent in her company, and since she told him she loved him it had been that much more special. It must have taken a miracle, Laurie thought, staring at the young woman beside him who was breathing deeply and very likely falling asleep. It had been the worst holiday ever for him but coming home to Jo's confession had more than made up for it. And the few times he'd managed to peck her on the mouth when she sat next to him or gave him her father's newspaper were just fringe benefits.

"What's your essay on anyway?" Jo asked, her arm bobbing up and down with her jaw.

"What does it mean to be an American? Discuss using two of the texts studied in weeks 4.' Real thrilling stuff," he added sarcastically, looking up into the sky that seemed ridiculously blue. It was almost the colour the tv went whenever Jo tried to use the remote.

"Well it _is_ a bit ridiculous." Jo admitted, peeking under her arm over at him. "You're Italian after all."

Laurie frowned at her. "Har-har," he said in the same tone as before. "I'll have you know I've been a citizen for plenty long, Jo. Besides my father was American, my Grandfather was American, my –"

"Ok, ok. I get it."

Laurie rolled onto his front to look down at her better. She wasn't as tanned as him but her skin was subtly darker than any of her sisters and he supposed it was her fault for staying out in the sun longer than any of them for so many years. He rather liked it.

"I wish I only had to play music," he said, seemingly out of no-where, causing Jo to remove her arm and look at him seriously. "I'm so sick of writing goddamned essays all the time."

Jo frowned at him, but patted his folded hands anyway, "Yeah. I know what you mean. I wish I only had to write sometimes too."

They smiled at each other for a bit until Jo sat up and leant heavily against his back, slinging an arm over it to muss his hair. "Let's move; it's getting too hot here."

Laurie wagged his eyebrows suggestively at her words and she laughed a bit before giving his head one last pat and dragged them both up over to sit under the tree. Laurie sat closer to her this time, making sure to keep Jo's hand in his as they relaxed against the thick trunk and began to talk quietly about who they'd seen that week.

"Do you know I swear Fred thought that Amy would be following me to uni this year?" Jo said, her head against Laurie's shoulder as she smiled at the thought of his friend being ridiculous over her sister. "Every time I see him it's 'how's Amy' this and 'I haven't seen Amy in a while' that. He's driving me insane. How did you put up with it all those years?"

"I dare say we had a few more common topics than just your sister."

Jo rolled her eyes, happy that Amy hadn't been a great burden on Laurie's friendship with Fred, for whilst he was probably a very lovely person she just couldn't see Fred not being one for anyone. If he brought her up one more time when she bumped into him after English she was going to sock him one.

"How is she by the way?" Laurie asked, surprising Jo a bit.

"She's good. I think." Why shouldn't he ask? Jo thought. She was his friend too. Jo was quiet, wondering why she wasn't able to keep the close contact she wanted to keep with all her sisters. Amy and she had never been the closest out of the four but it really didn't excuse Jo for not calling at least four times a week or writing her as often as she first had.

"It's ok, Jo. You've both grown up and are busy people; that's all." Laurie squeezed her hand.

"How do you do that?" She lifted her head and looked at him incredulous. "You inside my head? How do you know what I'm thinking like that?"

"Magic." He said simply, grinning at how surprised she was. Jo was as open as a book despite what people thought at first impression and he knew her _very_ well. "Really Jo," he said in a tone she felt was a little too condescending, "It's pretty obvious."

Jo sat back, displeased and took her hand from his, folding her arms in offence.

"Oh come on now. You know I'm just kidding," he nudged her shoulder, knowing she wasn't very serious. "Besides, who else is going to cause trouble for you Jo? Amy's gone so far away I've had to double my efforts in this month alone."

Jo grinned lopsidedly at him quickly, patting his knee as she put her head on his shoulder again. He liked how comfortable she felt against his shirt, the slight curls of hair that didn't smooth when she tied it that morning tickling his cheek when he angled his head the right way.

"We should go back soon," Jo began but he clamped a hand over her mouth, feeling her laugh behind his palm.

"I don't wanna hear it! There'll be none of this 'do your essay' talk until I say. Got it?" he looked down at her. Jo nodded, still smiling under his hand and he moved it away only to kiss her very quickly. They leant back against the tree again and Laurie couldn't wipe the smile from his face as Jo sat there wide-eyed, looking back at the house. Her insides were doing flips and she couldn't stop her heart from beating a lot faster than she liked as she scanned the windows.

He hoped someone had seen them.


	19. Too Much

Prompt 33: Too Much

A/N: So I might've been updating quite frequently but im in a funk tonight and I can't seem to shape laurie and jo right in my head. I blame a lack of decent sleep since Wednesday, and really I have only myself and the distance between Cooranbong, here and Sydney tbh. Sigh. Anyway here's to hoping this fixes the slump so I can write the next ridic challenging chap for sisom and remember to get some of the other 100 I've done, slash finish the many I've started :(

…

Jo lay slumped across the bench in the kitchen, glaring at the laminated top that seemed way too bright for the dimly lit room. She had a song going around and around and around in her head and unfortunately the high notes drove her just that little more insane as the light reflected into her eyes off the shiny surface against her head.

God she felt sick.

Laurie had gone out to be with his friends that night. She'd wished him well and practically pushed him out of the door, eager to have the evening to her self for once. He had a terrible habit of following her around like a puppy dog, just to get a rise out of her before she thumped him enough that he'd retreat. Unfortunately for her, his retreats were quickly forgotten and Laurie was back by her side, tugging the ends of her hair and kissing her neck as she desperately tried to concentrate on her book, the tv or cooking something that wouldn't collapse, explode or poison a rat. She was glad to have him gone. Or so she thought.

Jo had begun to miss his presence, large and in-the-way as it usually was and she had tried to call him on his mobile, only to find he wasn't answering because he was 'busy'. It was highly likely his partner in crime was trying to hold him up off the floor whilst he made a pass at some young lady. Laurie had a nasty habit of enjoying himself too much and too fast and it often led to his friends babysitting him until they piled him in a taxi heading home. It often left her embarrassed and with an overly amorous Laurie whose breath smelt like sink after she had poured his grandfather's housewarming cheese and wine down the sink when they had thrown up the majority of it.

Now all of this would not usually lead Jo to drink, in fact not much would. But there she was, face against the counter, squinting at the light and wishing she hadn't put on Regina Spektor.

It hadn't been because Laurie had left her alone, in fact she still wasn't sorry he had for if he found her in this mess she was sure her mortification would last a month. It wasn't because he wasn't answering his mobile – even though he'd promised to her, actually goddamned _promised_ at the start of the month – no that wasn't it.

Jo rolled her head up, struggling not to throw up as the whole world seemed to spin and seesaw all at once. She groaned audibly, wishing it didn't take so little to get her to this dreadful stage where she hated herself and the world and drinking and Laurie and every goddamned circumstance in which she hadn't told him she loved him and every freakin time some girl came onto him.

Jo held a fist up to her mouth as she felt the liquid rise up her throat in a burning sensation. She would be damned if she let it exit her body north. She swallowed slowly, unaware of how heavily she was still leaning against the bench as she smiled silently with pride that she hadn't thrown up.

The cd player clacked across the other side of the room and Jo turned to glare at. If it was ready to start playing the next disk, she was ready to kick it. It hissed and clanked again, searching for the next cd either she or Laurie had put in for a joke or for their actual music taste. But nothing was found and the blue light of 'NO DISC' stung her eyes as she drunkenly stared at the direction of the machine, attempting to read the message.

"Good!" Jo practically yelled at it, hoping she didn't sound like an angry drunk as the word rang out in the small apartment. She wobbled beside the counter, putting her hands on her waist, trying not to laugh when they slipped off her body and banged against the bench. Jo tried successfully a second time and beamed at the room with delight that she was defying her sloppy hands' will. "Good."

Jo surveyed the room which continued to move even when it felt as though she wasn't until she collapsed in the sofa against the wall opposite the front door. Still looking about it for heavens knows what, she found her smile slipping at the appearance of Laurie's shirts and jackets strewn across the room on various pieces of furniture and appliances.

It barely bothered her during the day as she was either at uni or writing or working and he would never dump his stuff in front of her so she could hardly catch him out for it. Jo's eyes shifted in their unfocused glaze from one item to the next as she recognised what day of the week he had worn each piece of clothing. When he would ever learn to pick up after himself she would never know. He might have had a maid at his grandfather's but she was certainly no maid to go and clean up after him. "I'm no maid!" Jo told the empty room.

She slumped to her side until she was half-lying across the couch with her head on a cushion squished against the arm of the sofa. Jo sighed heavily, glad that the feeling of nausea had mostly passed, even if the world continued to sway without her. She closed her eyes only to find it was better to keep them open. Maybe if she thought about something it would take her mind off feeling awful… Jo considered how difficult it was to form any sort of sustainable thought until she reflected on what got her into her present state in the first place.

Beginning to frown again she thought of the half empty bottle of gin on the kitchen bench, half hidden behind the panel that connected it to the overhanging cupboards and the roof. Laurie was going to have a fit whether he was drunk or not when he came home and saw that bottle. The thought made Jo scowl, a terrible face marring ugly scowl that made her cheek twitch and her head ache. How dare he worry about her when he was likely doing just as worse she thought jumbled, getting angry at the thought of Laurie being self-righteous about drinking when he came home.

"How dare he!" she grumbled into the cushion, crossing her arms and brow. She mused over how she had patiently looked after him when he would come home smashed, forgetting the many lectures she gave him, not to mention the bruises he would wonder about the following morning when he tried to make a move on her too late at night.

Jo felt like crying, but the situation didn't call for it at all and she guessed it was the alcohol moving through her, surprised she hadn't bawled her eyes out earlier. Gin was a bad choice she decided, feeling her chin wobble and her cheeks damped as she began to cry. "Oh boy," she sobbed, wishing she never saw the bottle in the first place.

Lying uncomfortably on the sofa she cried, not feeling nearly sad enough to be sniffing and spluttering on the cushion her sister had made for them. That caught Jo's attention and she sat up a little to look at the cushion, carefully tracing the little stitching of the image of a post-box. Amy must have worked hours every afternoon after school to put it together, to get the layers of cross stitching for the shadow and the original pattern. She must have spent hours looking at the letter box between hers and Laurie's house alone.

Jo started sobbing harder, clutching the cushion to her chest, love for her sister swelling in her heart. She felt ridiculous, sentimental and earnest all in one as her peripheral vision swam.

Something finally clicked in Jo's mind as she leaned forward, clutching the cushion between her legs and chest. Her sister. It all came flooding back so quickly it made her want to throw up again. Her face was wet, she felt like falling forward or vomiting all because of her sister.

Jo frowned amongst her tears, recalling the phone call she'd made earlier that night. She'd only started missing Laurie about two or three hours after he'd left; the quiet, empty house deafening to her lonesome self. When Jo had dialled his number she guessed it would take him a while to fumble about for the cell in his pocket, but the ring tone almost immediately cut to a female voice.

"Hello?"

Jo had lost all train of thought in her surprise and for a moment she stood in the middle of Laurie's and hers kitchen listening to her sister breathe down the phone.

"Amy?" Jo asked cautiously. She'd know her youngest sister's voice anywhere but she didn't want to leap to any conclusions. He did say he was going out with friends. He did ask her to come.

"Who is this?" her sister sounded distracted and Jo immediately thought with a touch of spite she didn't know she was capable of that Laurie hadn't asked Amy to come. At least she was fairly certain he hadn't.

"Nevermind." Jo's tone was clipped and she brushed over her thoughts as she considered that if Amy didn't recognise her it was fair game to find out what was going on. "Where's Laurie?"

"Uh…" there was a long pause that made Jo presently sob loudly into the cushion. Amy had hesitated longer than what Jo thought was necessary and she could here male voices in the background as the girl remained silent. A deep burst of a laugh made Jo's eyebrows shoot up, knowing that noise anywhere.

"Well?"

"Uh… um, he's busy."

"Well could you put him on anyway?" Jo could at least tell him off for bringing her sister to a pub.

"Sorry… he's…" and suddenly Jo understood everything when a male voice whispered by the phone, into Amy's ear "preoccupied."

"Busy!" her sister had squeaked out before hanging up, mid-laughter.

Jo slowly replaced the phone on the receiver. She knew who had whispered. She knew her sister was laughing because she was being tickled. Nothing wrong with that, she thought dreadfully calm, moving to the cupboard Laurie left the alcohol in. Not a thing to worry about, she told herself silently, reaching in to pull out the gin. Friends often teased and tickled each other.

But, she thought, gloom settling in as she poured the drink in a cup she later abandoned, friends did not whisper with bedroom tones.

Jo fell back to her uncomfortable earlier position on the sofa, sobbing and choking on her tears as she thought about Laurie's tone of voice. As far as she had known, Laurie had never used that whispered tone on anyone else. It had always made her toes curl deliciously thinking that no one had stood that close to her or that he had whispered that way to anyone other than she.

But there he was, in some pub with Amy. Her sister!

Jo threw the cushion to the ground half heartedly, hugging herself as the gin coaxed every last stinging, raw salty drop from her eyes. She was never going to drink again, she vowed to herself, shaking with her emotion and the cold left behind. She had chosen a path she would not usually take and it had only brought her pain.

The first mistake was to fall in love with Laurie. The second, but equally important at present mistake was to drink gin.

She wasn't going to do it again.

Sitting up to pull another cushion from the other side of the couch she placed it where Amy's one had sat. Her mother had stitched this one and it was a great comfort to have it nestled under her cheek as she stared at the front door, her feet on the ground as her torso lay horizontal to the back of the couch. She would wait for him to come home (if he did) and she would tell him she was leaving before she went to bed.

Jo didn't have to wait long for ten minutes later the scratch of the key being sloppily inserted into the door could be heard on the other side of the room. Jo wiped her face with her sleeve, still shivering from the cold the wetness of her face had left behind. Laurie trudged inside, leaning against the door until it shut and he turned around.

"Jo! I didn't expect you! Still up?" he sounded cheerful and she stared back emotionlessly.

He waited for her to say something, to blink but nothing happened. "Jo?" she was so still apart from a slight shake of her arms that lay wrapped about her middle. Concerned he moved towards her, feeling how heavy his feet were again. Moving closer he saw how red her eyes were and Laurie frowned, bending down in front of her. "Jo dear, what is it?"

"I –" her voice broke and she swallowed a few times, desperate not to cry again feeling dry and brittle inside. She didn't want Laurie to see her so affected by his choice. "'m leavin tomorrow." Jo mumbled quickly, closing her eyes and swallowing again.

"What? Jo, I don't understand." Laurie lifted a hand to brush her messy hair out of her face, drawing back when she flinched in an unfocused delay. "Wait," he leaned closer, finally smelling the liquor on her. "Have you been drinking?!" Laurie sat back surprised. It was rare for Jo to touch alcohol and looking at her with this new knowledge it made sense for her to be talking nonsense and looking awful. She looked like she'd been thrown off a train. A windswept, stinky train.

"Nahhm'fine" she grumbled, pushing him away. Jo was so angry he had taken a tone she heard as disappointment with her. She buried her face deeper into the cushion wishing he would leave her alone in her misery now that she'd told him her plans. He could go on with his life and Amy once she was out of the picture, and she would be if he just left her alone.

"No you're not, love." He moved to touch her face again and thought better of it when she looked ready to cry again. "Oh man, Jo please don't. You know I can't –" but she was already shuddering into the cushion. He sat back with a frown of concern across his face, feeling like he'd never had the night out at all. "Please?"

She let an arm flail towards him, gesturing for him to leave. Laurie looked over her again. There was no way he could leave her in this state. She wasn't even lying properly and she would get such an ache in her neck and side tomorrow if she didn't swing her feet up onto the couch. Her breath stank and he knew she would want to have brushed her teeth. Jo's crying was something he wasn't good at fixing but he was sure as hell going to try.

First he needed to find out what had put her in such a state.

"Why are you leaving tomorrow?" he asked, getting up to go to the kitchen and find out just what and how much she drank. She seemed upset with him and he was sure her answer would explain everything. He hadn't had a drop of liquor that night and he certainly hadn't expected Jo to either.

"You want Amy," she said in a little voice he barely recognised.

"What?" he exclaimed before finding the gin tucked behind the newspaper on the bench. Gin. It always made girls cry. "Oh…" he said, feeling like he'd solved the night's mysteries.

When he moved back into the living room Jo was silently crying harder into the sofa, her body racking with the alcohol-induced emotion. Pitying her state he moved to sit beside her on the ground again, patting her back in what he hoped was a comforting way. How had Jo done it all those times he'd come home in a similar state?

"Go!" she told him, her face in the cushion. He watched her confused, still touching her back soothingly as she yelled at him. "Go be with her!"

"Who? What? Jo I don't understand!"

Jo turned her red face from the pillow to look at him over her shoulder in a pained look he had never seen her wear before. "I heard you on the phone! You can go an' be with Amy, I don't care. I'll be fine. I _am_ fine leave me alone!"

He looked back bewilderment plain across his face as his hand still absentmindedly stroked the ends of her long hair against her back. "On the phone? What do you mean? When?"

"Tonight! I'm not an idiot Laurie I heard you when she answered! Preoccupied were you!? I bet you were." Jo sat up in her anger, her face wet once more as she pointed drunkenly at him.

"What?" he asked again, looking around as he tried to figure out what she meant. When he'd gotten to the pub he'd seen Tom and Fred and he'd been overjoyed to see that Fred had convinced Amy to come as well. He remembered embracing them all and complaining to Amy that her older sister was being a bore and wouldn't show. Amy had looked disappointed but she shrugged it off to hug him again before moving to sit beside Fred, blushing when he placed his larger hand over hers. It was the most romantic thing he'd seen in that bar.

"Amy and me? Jo, Amy's in love with Fred! You're not making sense." Jo frowned back at him, her hands cupping her elbows as she leaned forward to him, looking him in the eyes.

"Then who phone whispering her?" she slurred, frowning when she wasn't sure if it came out right. Laurie looked back at her, coaxing her to come to the obvious conclusion herself. "What? Well who?"

"Think Jo, Amy and Fred…"

"No, who?!" she frowned, swaying in her seat a little before it dawned across her face. "Oh…"

Laurie smiled in relief, tugging the end of her hair playfully as she went beet-red from realisation. "Oh my goodness." Jo put her heads in her hands feeling like a complete idiot. And a jerk! She'd accused her boyfriend of cheating on her with her sister! "Oh god," she moaned.

Laurie tried hard not to laugh, wrapping his arm about her slight form, happy that she fell against him without a fight.

"Wait!" she sat up, focus coming into her eyes. "Why did she have your phone?"

Laurie waited for Jo to look back at him before he answered. "She was supposed to be calling for a taxi for Fred and her." And Jo's eyebrows raised at all that entailed. No wonder she had been so quick to answer and so distracted all the same.

"Ok, now I feel like a total idiot." Jo wiped her face again, feeling exhausted after the emotional rollercoaster she had jumped on that night. "Thanks a lot," she said sarcastically, smiling brokenly when Laurie pulled her into a hug she didn't feel she deserved.

"Jo…" he felt like he needed to give some big monumental speech on what she meant to him. How he never looked at another friend let alone another woman let alone another sister since he met her. No one could compare in her friendship, in her passion for everything she did, her quirks and bad cooking, her messy laugh or her unkempt appearance. He didn't take anything she did lightly, no look was indifferent, no look was unnoticed. He thought he'd made that clear four or so years ago and he thought she'd understood last year when she finally said she loved him too. Everything had to do with her; every part of his life was dedicated to making her proud of him, making him feel worthwhile for being something in her eyes. Laurie didn't know how to say it all without her hitting him or crying again or thinking him the biggest fool she'd ever known. So he held her closer, shutting his eyes tight when she haphazardly wrapped her arms around his neck and squeezed tighter than she usually would. "I love you, you should know that."

"I know," she mumbled, resting her head against his tiredly, feeling his warmth seep through her skin. She didn't deserve him but she didn't want to lose him. "I love you back."

They held onto each other a little longer, the evening's confusion and mistakes dissolving into memory as they enjoyed a moment that was understood by both.


	20. Ends

Prompt 3: Ends

It had been a long day. Longer than he cared to remember.

The way her hands moved across his shoulders, down his back to rest against his waist made it worth it. At the end of ends it all felt worth it to have her nestled against his chest, as bare as he was, her soul as naked as his heart.

"I love you," he didn't know how to say it any better than that.

Jo laughed lightly, the pressure of her cheek against his sternum sending a rumble of sensation through his body he almost forgot on long days like these. He could feel her smile against his skin and it made him feel lighter than any of the cups of coffee offered to him all week. It made him feel with the familiarity of a husband that this woman against him was everything.

He knew she hated it when he felt all sappy as he did now. He knew that she would hit him and tussle about until he forgot all about sentimentality and succumbed to the modes of lust she could better deal with. But despite the thousand clichés built up in his chest and her irrational dislike of said emotions he felt them more keenly than anything else.

And sometimes he wished she could feel them until she choked. But then she wouldn't be Jo. And he didn't want anyone but Jo.

"Do you know how long I waited for this?" he asked, moving a heavy hand up her back to hold her closer. "All week. All week my life has dragged on and on until this point, the one blessing in my week."

He kissed her shoulder, liking the taut smoothness under his lips as he considered how long it took to get to this point. He really didn't know how he made it through the endless meetings, the tumbling hills of paper work and pounding of colleagues' questions to get to the end. To come home at long last and fall into bed with the one person in the world he never stopped thinking of.

He traced the shape of her skin at the bottom of her spine, letting his hand fall and caress places she hid from every other human. Places only he had ever been. It was sacred to be allowed to do such a thing and he treated each tentative touch just so. Laurie would never jeopardise the chance to touch and hold Jo for the rest of his life; he was sensible and could see a perfect thing when he had it. He never let her think she was unwanted.

But with long weeks came a long time between his being home to see her. Sometimes he wondered if she ever felt the hollow loneliness that sometimes overcame him in the corner of his immense office as he tried unsuccessfully to recall what book he intended to collect from the shelf before him. That hollowness would catch in his chest, about the same spot Jo's head lay against that moment, and then he would remember himself and that the book was actually an index and on the other side of the cold room.

Touching a particularly sensitive spot Jo jumped against him and he laughed at the way she punched him lightly in the side for it.

"What? How was I to know?"

Jo simply eyed him down before leaning against him again, content to feel him close to her without the complications of real movement.

"Please, as if there's anything about me you don't already know, Teddy."

Laurie smiled, even though it had taken such a long, exhausting, emotional effort to get her to agree to anything other than the dearest friendship all of it had paid off. And it was only in these quiet moments after a week filled with emotions not strangers to the stress of Jo's temper that they would both remember and agree that yes in the end it had been too long.


	21. Strangers

Prompt 25: Strangers

A/N: yay for Thursdays with nothing better to do than fill in time between tutorials of boredom. Also, I'm struggling through the next chapter of Success but it's really not my fav atm. Hang tight.

Jo tugged at her skirt for the eighth time since they'd arrived. Laurie was on the other side of the room, known only to Jo from the extra head taller he was than the rest of the crowded room. Whilst she often complained it gave him a totally unfair advantage to most of the sports they played, it was times like these Jo really appreciated his giant-like figure. Even with the twenty or so other bodies between them, she could keep an eye on him.

"So that's why economics totally sucks ass," the tipsy boy with red streaked hair almost yelled at her as he swayed, propping his hand up on the wall behind her. Jo nodded absentmindedly thinking he looked more like and arts student than an accountant anyway. "So what'd yer say yer studying?" he asked before taking another mouthful of what smelt like bourbon and three other drinks she had spilled on her.

"I didn't," Jo considered the young man who was squinting with what she hoped was curiosity and not the precursor to vomit. "I'm studying Lit."

"Lit?"

"Literature."

The boy mouthed 'oh' nodding carefully as Jo rolled her eyes, the darkness of the room covering her scowl.

"That Shakespeare and crap?" Jo turned her head towards him again, noticing wearily that he was gradually leaning closer with glazed eyes. She slowly nodded yes before turning back to look over the sea of shuffling, loud people for Laurie. "You wanna make out?"

"No thanks." Jo stepped away from the now more-than-tipsy boy just as he fell into the laps of the couple that had been sitting to her right. Smiling at the scene Jo shook her head and took off onto the makeshift 'dance floor' to find her neighbour.

Every time she went to one of these uncomfortable, awkward, stranger-filled parties she promised herself it would be the last one. But then Laurie would look up at her, pouting better even than Amy with shining eyes and clasped hands begging on his knees unashamedly. He complained they (Jo more like it) never got out enough, telling her that a social life was healthy and study was boring and Amy would be there and she would have at least the two of them and it would be oh so fun time would fly.

Jo pushed past a collection of necking couples, feeling totally out of place. Silently she cursed Laurie and all his powers of persuasion. Jo finally spotted a group of faces she knew and she squeezed her way past the grating dancers to fall into their small circle. Amy was grinning red-cheeked with Fred's hand clasped to her stomach as she laughed at Watson's joke about Norma and Timothy's engagement party for the umpteenth time that evening.

"Jo!" Amy cried, finally noticing her sister. She embraced her fiercely before falling back to Fred's side quickly, reclaiming the quiet boy's hand. Jo frowned for a moment wondering why her eldest and youngest sister had taken to such dull and boring men. "So you did come! I thought I saw our boy gallivanting about! When did you get here? Oh, never mind I'm so glad you came. Fred didn't think you would, but you did and so I'm right and I win! Oh, how come you never wear anything low-cut? You're not a nun Jo – for Christ's sake! Oh well, next time I'm _making_ you come over before and you can borrow some of my clothes. You've really grown up and I know you'll look great in them. Oh! There's Anders, I wonder if he brought Norma and Timmy with him. Oh wouldn't that be great, Wats? Oh come on."

Jo stared as her sister dragged off the two boys to meet her friends. Amy was in her element in gatherings such as these but it was always a surprise just how much she could say and how fast and clear even with all the noise about them.

"Wow that girl can talk." A voice commented from behind and Jo turned to see someone she hadn't in such a long time.

"Oh my god!" Jo threw her arms around the boy her height. "Everett! William Everett! Well look at you! I haven't seen you in… what, it must be five years now?" the boy hugged her back before pulling away a little red-faced.

William nodded, running a hand through his short-clipped tawny hair. Jo scanned up and down her old friend, assessing all the changes she could in the poor light. People began to bump into them as the song changed to something obviously popular. Jo didn't recognise it, even as the dancers began to jump together.

"Woah!" William steadied her before leading them closer to the wall a few feet to his left. "So how have you been stranger? You look… well, grown-up frankly."

Jo smiled, looking away towards the dancers wondering when he would move his hands from her shoulders. A lot of people had been saying that lately, even Laurie who looked at her so solemnly as though she would grow up without him. "You too Will. I had no idea you were even still in the States?"

Finally the light brown haired boy let his hands fall to his side as he casually leaned on the wall, stuffing them in his pockets as Jo copied, folding her arms. He watched her shyly a bit as Jo's attention was taken by the coloured lights someone had rigged to flash in time with the beat of the popular song.

"I came back at the start of this year actually." William shrugged, unable to lose the slight smile on his face as Jo watched him inquisitively. "I'm studying at Columbia. Well, for the semester at least."

"Oh wow! I'm studying there too! How amazing is that? What course are you doing? What subjects?" Jo stepped closer, eager to catch up.

"Science. I'm doing the usuals. Boring aren't I?" Will grinned as she gave him an exasperated look.

"I can't believe you're still into all that crap" she teased him, "and you had such promise in English! Muses must be in mourning everywhere. Especially back in jolly old England, eh?" Jo asked slyly. "I mean you _are_ only here for the semester…"

"Nothing ever did get by you, Jo."

Jo smiled widely, moving closer again, wishing that the dreadful new song she'd heard in Amy's car on Thursday wouldn't be played so loudly. It was making it near impossible to hold a conversation.

"So what's her name?"

"Albert, actually." Jo raised her brows, smiling even more at the flush in her friend's cheeks as he leaned in with the name.

"Well good for you Will! It's about bloody time." Will blushed further, patting Jo's arm in the old manner.

"Thanks, Jo. You know what that means to me."

"Well, congratulations. Really." Jo leaned across to kiss him on the cheek, proud her friend had finally found everything he ever wanted. She couldn't have asked for better news of him.

This party was actually worth it, Jo thought when she pulled back grinning stupidly, happy for Will who looked about as silly as she did.

"Ahem." Jo turned to the dance floor again to see Laurie standing there. Still smiling Jo beckoned him over. But the tall young man stood stiffly on the edge of the booty-shaking mass, his gaze dark as he looked between Jo and Will.

"What are you doing?" Jo called out, the smile still lingering on her lips as she regarded him puzzled.

"I could ask you the same thing."

"Come over here." She frowned at her neighbour when he remained stationary and Jo excused herself from Will.

"What's going on?" She took his arm but he continued to stare at William who gave them a worried look. "Teddy!" Laurie finally looked down at Jo, pulling away from her grasp. "Please, what's wrong?"

"What was that, Jo?" he gestured at Will, the blackness of his eyes swelling as he examined her friend before turning his gaze on her, sadness immediately filling his expression. "Why did you do that?"

"Do what!?" she moved towards Laurie again. William watched on as Laurie bent down closer to Jo's face and they had a heated argument in whispers, or so he could tell from the tall man's stormy expression and Jo's posture. Jo's hands moved from waving by their faces to fists at her hips. Will winced at the look of heartbreak on the strange-to-him boy's face before they stood apart. He watched as Jo dragged the taller and presumably stronger man towards him and William swallowed unsure whether he wanted to be part of this. Jo had always argued fiercely on the tarmac back in high school.

"Tell him." She pointed her thumb over her shoulder.

"Tell him what, Jo? Is he giving you any trouble?" Will frowned at the boy behind his old friend.

"Oh for Pete's sake, Laurie, Will and I have known each other since high school and I was congratulating him on his new _boyfriend_."

Laurie squinted at Jo who had turned around to face him on finishing her explanation. He suddenly looked very guilty and he nodded to Will apologetically.

"It's true."

Laurie looked between them a moment longer before he abruptly leaned forward and planted a kiss on a very disgruntled-turned-surprised Jo. She swallowed at the unexpected feel of Laurie's lips on her and the distinct hot breath against her cheek as he pulled back, wavering a moment before smiling and nodding once more at William.

"Wha-" was all poor Jo managed before Laurie walked off towards the music, hands in his pockets and smiling like the cat that got the cream.

"Wow. You sure keep strange friends these days, Jo. Good-looking, but strange."


	22. Christmas

Prompt 92: Christmas

Jo sat wedged between the lump of a boy that was her neighbour and her eldest sister's best cushion. To say she was uncomfortable would be a lie Jo admitted to herself, smiling sleepily at the large hand that rested on her pinafore pocket. The heady scent of Christmas filled the air when Marmee brought out the hot pudding swimming in custard and the family huddled around with bowls and spoons at the ready.

Jo was utterly content. Her family were happy and healthy and _here_ and she had never felt so joyously warm. It was a delicious feeling.

Laurie passed her a heaping of the dessert and she smiled her thanks, perfectly able to ignore the pleasant sensation of his long fingers brushing her equally long ones. She was even able to smile and turn away at the sly change in colour of his eyes when they watched her as he resettled beside her.

"Isn't Christmas jolly, Jo dear?" he asked after a few spoon-fills of silence in their corner of the toasty room.

"Absolutely plummy, my boy." Jo grinned, hooking her arm about his. Laurie raised his dark brow at her motion but wisely said nothing and continued to eat, leisurely watching the rest of the March family. He'd never really known what family really was until he came to Concord and, he added to his thoughts hesitating as a now familiar surge of giddy happiness rose through his chest, fell in love with Josephine March. Turning to look down at her beloved hand clamped about his right shirt-arm the feeling echoed about his heart in a moment he felt he would almost burst, Laurie instead settled for an ecstatic beam he was careful to hide from his unknowing friend.

Mrs March however caught the expression across the room and quickly looked to her husband when Laurie's dark eyes came to rest on her. She had guessed their young neighbour's heart very quickly once he begun to whisk Jo away to huddle in corners and whisper things her sisters would never know and scheme and play in a separate world. Mrs March also saw how their tempers would flare and burn hot and fast until an outside part such as herself had the good mind to convince one or both to forgive and make-up just as fast. Their friendship was a soaring flighty thing that dove and twisted and leaped high and fast across Orchard House and the Laurence's and Mrs March grew concerned that it would not last long into the next evolution Laurie plainly saw it would. Like the fire-crackers Hannah confiscated two mornings ago, Jo and Laurie would burn too fast and explode from their own ferocity.

When Marmee looked back Laurie had returned to talking in low tones with her second daughter over the remains of their pudding and custard.

"Do you know what you're getting?" Laurie asked, unheard by the rest of the family save Jo.

Jo bit back a grin at his mischief, unwinding her arm from his to set her bowl down. "No, do you?" Her brow arched high in good-humoured suspicion, even as Laurie placed his own bowl atop hers, reaching eagerly for her hand again.

"I for one would never be so sneaky as to peek before Christmas day, good fellow and to suggest such a thing is awfully scandalous of you." His lips twitched at his own cheek and Jo swatted him rightfully.

Sighing happily he pulled them both back to lie against the sofa cushions, their bellies satisfied. "Well I have it on good authority that Amy March has already 'scooped out' her presents and she is 'quite pleasantly surprised'. Bet you didn't know that!"

"Hardly," Jo answered watching her youngest sister tug Beth's kitten's tail before lifting it onto her lap and pet it ever-so gently. "I caught her myself this morning, can you believe? She never could contain herself, but I'm glad someone other than your good self isn't so saintly around here."

Laurie caught Jo's smile and tugged her fingers playfully, enjoying the smoothness of her digits as they lay entangled with his. If he had his way he would never leave her side. Jo however watched her family lovingly, unaware of her companion's thoughts and was content to let him hold her hand in return for being in such good form the past two days. Even when Jo had hit her toe on his shovel and sworn at him he'd been the perfect gentleman.

"What are you thinking of?" Laurie asked his face suddenly closer to hers. Jo froze, feeling his chin rest against her shoulder, his warm breath brushing the hair behind her ear.

"How everything has changed," Jo said honestly, watching her father but thinking of Laurie's sudden proximity. "Our Christmases have gotten a lot better since he's come home. A lot better since you've come too, really." Jo added in a rare moment of sentiment.

Jo felt the hand wrapped around hers squeeze and she snuggled deeper against the cushions, glad Laurie spared her from a silly response that would make her take back such heart-felt words.

"Thank you Jo." The voice by her ear was deep, choked with emotion and she was glad she couldn't see his face. "Mine too."

Another squeeze from his hand settled their quiet conversation into silence and Jo saw Amy watching her enviously from her spot beside Meg. She wondered what made Amy's eyes darken almost immediately before they turned to the fire, her hand still absentmindedly stroking the grey and white kitten in her lap. Was she unhappy with her presents despite what Laurie professed earlier? Or was she merely thinking of the changes Jo had too? Yet, warm, full and unimaginably happy as Jo was she soon forgot Amy's look and returned her thoughts to the hand in hers.

"Bed time, girls," Mrs March rose, offering her hand to her youngest. Amy took her mother's hand and Jo saw her rosy cheeks darken at having been singled out first. It was one of her pet peeves for being the youngest always meant being the first sent to bed. The men rose with the March women, Laurie infinitely slower than his grandfather and Mr March to be seen out by the latter.

"You'll come say goodbye won't you, Jo?" Laurie asked, sorry to give up her hand.

"I'll do even better and come see you tomorrow after breakfast."

"You promise?"

"I promise." She said, watching their hands fall apart with equal regret. Mr March shook Mr Laurence's hand with sincere wishes for a merry Christmas and many thanks for sharing the eve with his family. Laurie was given a pat on the back and told to come back tomorrow when he liked before Mr March closed the front door, smiling at Jo as he passed her in the foyer to climb the stairs to bed.

Jo stood in the foyer, wavering as she wondered if she should go after her friend and wish him a better Christmas than she had. Something in her stilled her legs and whispered to her to go to bed, an old serious part of herself that usually shouted when Laurie acted with silly sentiment and she usually listened. But a newer part of her took hold of her heart and urged her to call after him, to show Laurie that she did love him dearly even if it wasn't in the way she knew he wanted.

She was moving to the door and with bravery coursing through her limbs she opened it and ran after her neighbour. Laurie was trudging slowly behind his grandfather, five or so paces from the steps to their house his ankles in the snow before he heard her running footsteps.

"Teddy!"

Both the Laurences turned to see Jo clambering after them without her coat, her hand raised to hail the youngest. Mr Laurence smiled to himself, his moustache twitching as his heart went out to his grandson. Quietly he entered the house, leaving the young people to their holiday wishes with a bubble of hope inside his old chest.

"Teddy," Jo called again coming to a stop before Laurie who was smiling at her bemusedly. The tall young man took hold of her arms as she stumbled to the side, her leather shoes slipping in the wet snow on the ground and he had to laugh at the picture she presented. Shaking in the night air without coat, wrong shoes on her stocking-clad feet and her hair falling rapidly out of its stylish bun. Jo looked like herself. It made his heart burst.

"What is it, you goose? Running about like a headless chicken – you'll catch your death!"

Jo had to laugh as her neighbour pulled her closer, wrapping his thickly-woven gloves around her elbows. "I didn't get to say Merry Christmas." She bit her lip smiling sheepishly at his as he looked down at her in surprise. "Merry Christmas!"

Laurie laughed, knocking his forehead against hers. She was the most unusual person he ever met and heavens but he loved her for it! "Oh Merry Christmas, Jo. Now go back before you catch cold."

Jo stood there shaking, thinking herself a complete fool having acted very much like her counterpart who looked very much like he was laughing at her under his fur hat. "Right! Very well," she said, sounding snappish. She didn't know what she had expected running out the door after him like that but it wasn't a quick 'Merry Christmas' and a laugh. Jo frowned, more at her self than the Laurence boy who was watching her still bemused as she slowly froze in front of him.

"Honestly Jo, if you don't g-" but Laurie was cut off by the sudden and unexpected press of cold lips against his jaw. The two stood very still in surprise and snow began to fall for the third time that night. Jo pulled back after a minute of realising what she had done. It was dark and cold and she was shaking but she had just kissed Laurie. Was it just like a friend? She worried, her arms folding together to fight off the freezing temperature.

"Go," Laurie absentmindedly finished his word in a quiet voice sounding unlike him, too stunned to form any sensible thought. Jo looked pained for a moment before she smartly turned about, her beautiful Christmas dress swirling prettily against the snow and Laurie came to realise at the turn of maroon tartan that she thought he wanted her to leave. "Don't go!" he corrected himself, reaching out to pull her back to him.

Jo was shuddering quite hard by now and Laurie stepped closer without thinking, wrapping his arms tightly about her, hesitating only a second before covering her mouth with his. A small sound of opposition rose from Jo but it was quickly clamped down and she found herself kissing Laurie in a decidedly non-friend-like way. His lips were unfathomably warms and she felt her body bow into his tall lean one eagerly, feeling every inch of skin come alive. She no longer felt exposed to the elements or Laurie's patronising stare, with his lips firmly against hers, his gloved hands possessively holding her waist she was Laurie and he her. Unafraid Jo's arm lifted to clasp about his neck unlike any time before, pushing his hot face against her cold one as they kissed fiercely. His nose bent into her cheek and her lips fell open to his tongue as her icy fingers warmed themselves on the left side of his jaw and Laurie couldn't think how any Christmas would ever compare to this moment.

When they pulled apart for breath, Jo's arm slipped back to her side and Laurie loosened his breathless hold on her. "Well, Merry Christmas." Jo said, looking as stunned as Laurie had felt a few minutes before.

"Merry Christmas, Jo." Laurie laughed and she about-turned and walked back to the house in a complete daze. Christmas had come a night early and as Amy had said, Laurie was quite pleasantly surprised.


	23. Middle

Prompt 2: Middles

Rating: M (because I am so excited for Mariagoner's fic this weekend I had to finish this chapter from a year ago. Pretty similar to the challenge I gave her actually… but GOD hers is gonna be hot.) Warning for sex and a lot of improbability.

He was thirty when he first saw the swell of Jo's naked flesh.

It was the middle of the day when he arrived at Plumfield, the warm sun beat across his neck stealing the nip of the breeze that rushed about. It was perfect for just the romp he planned, and if the boys were very obliging he might have his friend to himself for the afternoon.

With a spring in his stride that he had felt seriously lacking in the past year he climbed the few steps up to the front door, knocking to announce his arrival. Without waiting for an answer he opened the door and smiled to the old woman who had moved to let him in. A brief howdeedo and a flight of stairs later he found Jo reading to the boys in the study.

Laurie leaned against the doorframe, observing the boys' concentration on Jo's words - how well she said them! He watched their little faces cringe and laugh at the gruesome bits, and blush deeply or scrunch their noses in disgust at the romance. Jo continued reading as enraptured with the story, her voice transporting the room into the realm of fiction, a skill Laurie had always known her to have even from the very start.

"Oh!" Jo suddenly paused in her tale and the room opened their eyes to find their teacher looking in surprise to the visitor in the doorway. "When did you arrive?"

"Well that's a fine greeting for your boy!" Laurie grinned, unable to fake exasperation as he took his hands out of his pockets and walked over to the group. Smiling his 'hullo's around the room he bent by Jo's side as the boys scuttled off to play, affording Laurie the time he needed to put his plan forward.

"Oh that's a splendid idea!" Jo said, a wise smile that was newer than old but oddly became her crossed her lips and she took Laurie's shoulders, book in her lap. "I'm afraid we're no longer boy and girl anymore but that's no reason to stop a good lark every now and then. I'm all in Teddy; only you're sure Amy can spare you the afternoon?"

"Oh yes," he laughed, standing. Jo followed shortly and he tucked her hand in the crook of his arm, leading them off without delay. He tried not to think of the years he spent trying to persuade Jo to do it before. "We've lunched and I'm sure that poor woman can take no more of my teasing and taunting when she'd much rather serenity for her painting. She does it so capitally; I'm hardly in any position to deny her anything that will help her when I'm such a lumbering hinder myself."

Jo smiled at the description of the pair as the stopped by the back door in the kitchen. Untying the knot of her pinafore she hung it on the rack and took Laurie's hand without the old hesitation. The afternoon was warm with high noon sun and late spring about the air as Jo and Laurie meandered their way across Plumfield's estate towards the woodland Jo loved dearly. If there was one thing she missed in being grown-up and responsible it was the adventure of climbing a good tree and there was a particularly good one Laurie had shown her a little over a year ago by the edge of the property with low boughs and a sturdy trunk that bent quaintly in the middle.

Along their walk conversation was filled with musings on spouses' respective obsessions that neither of them would understand. For Laurie it was his wife's artistic taste for it clashed with his own notions drastically though he would never say so to her – Amy's taste was as refined as any lady in their circle and she had been made for picking the right shade of blue and the correct length of lace and whatever new shimmery sort of material dressed his Lady's skirts. For Jo it was her Professor's true love for philosophy, for which she shared but never to the same degree and it seemed she never would for it would always take him to far places in the desire to share or learn more. Her father, she imagined would be pleased if she ever showed even as close an inkling for it as Fritz did.

Irresponsibly or perhaps for sheer confession Jo and Laurie imparted these small anxieties to each other, nodding sagely and hiding smiled at their mutual foolishness over such petty worries. Laurie slung an arm around his shorter companion and she wrapped an arm around his slim waist taking great comfort in how safe the familiar action was now that their worrisome partners were in grateful existence.

"There it is!" Laurie pointed ahead and Jo laughed, letting go of his lanky form to run ahead, mindless of her neat hair and constricting crinoline. Reaching the tree breathless but ahead of Laurie nonetheless she beamed brightly at him, cocking an eyebrow at his inability to keep up with her.

"It's been a while," he offered as an excuse, sitting against the tree as she untied her boots.

"Ha!" she exclaimed, ducking to the other side of the tree. "You were never quicker than me Theodore Laurence and it looks as though you never will be. For all your height and impressiveness you might as well be a needle-picking girl!" Laurie laughed as Jo poked out her tongue and begun to back away mysteriously so that he had to twist around the tree to see her properly.

"Whatcha doin'?" he asked, mimicking her boys with a wide smile as Jo's hands disappeared behind her back and she begun to fiddle with something.

"Hey now," Jo frowned. "Close your eyes and be a good lad. There's no way I can climb this tree with a net so be a gentleman and let me dress."

Laurie's brow climbed at that but obediently he shut his eyes and turned back to lean against the tree with his arms crossed. Jo would see that she could trust him, he thought as he waited, every zip of a sleeve and rustle of the grass sounding a hundred times louder to his ears that seemed to twitch heedless of his will. He would not peek. Jo's throat made sounds of a struggle and she sighed ever so lightly but each noise resounded like thunder in his ears and before he knew it Laurie had opened his eyes.

This was not what he had thought of when he decided to go for a lark with his old playmate.

More rustling sounded and with one final swallow Laurie twisted to peek at what gave Jo such pains. As soon as he spied her form, he knew he was undone. Years of practiced civility and platonic chumminess fell aside at one glimpse of her skirt around her waist and her long legs climbing out of the restrictive crinoline. The white linen wisped across the muscle of her thigh and he watched without breath as Jo pulled herself from the net, adjusting her skirt back down, over her drawers without heading the length of her blouse. The material tugged loose and Laurie's eyes widened in fascination at the smooth cream slip of skin he caught for one second above her skirt's waistline.

Jo turned in the grass and he quickly ducked back behind the tree, praying she hadn't seen him spying. A heartbeat later she seemed ready for she cleared her throat and he stepped out from the tree, crossing his hands behind his back in Jo's old trick of avoidance.

"All done?" he asked innocently, blinking dumbly at the hooped net that hung like a chicken pen around the tall green grass.

Jo came to him and he wondered if she could hear the pounding of his heart. She had no idea how everything had just changed in under a minute and how his voice stuck in his throat and his hands were sweating as she touched his shoulders.

"Well, you going to help me up or not?"

Laurie paused a second before laughing nervously and putting his hands about her waist (trying desperately not to think of the sight he knew through the white material under his hands) and he lifted her to the nearest bough.

"Bet I beat you to the top," Jo challenged, already hooking her leg around the next branch as her long fingers gripped the bark of the trunk. God! Laurie sighed internally, had she no idea of the view she afforded him down below?

"I don't think so," he replied, knowing it would be otherwise for his hands were shaking like chandeliers as he moved to climb after her. Coming to Plumfield had been a mistake, he realised, hands moving across the bark, his trouser legs snagging every now and then as he climbed higher, Jo always a branch or two above. He should never have gotten larking into his head. Really, he groused, his palm smarting when he lost attention to his grip, it was all Amy's fault in the first place. If she hadn't gotten angry with him for lolling around and being a general nuisance he never would have considered leaving the happy haven that was his home.

Amy seemed so far away when Jo's legs swung over his head. God, he swallowed thickly at his thoughts. Why in the name of everything holy did he have to sneak a look!? Distracted by his thoughts, Laurie did not beat Jo and she crowed over him at the highest point safe for climbing in the tree.

"Ha ha!" she cried, throwing an arm up in victory looking out at the fields that stretched back towards the way they'd come. "Oh, Teddy it's fantastic!"

Laurie finally stopped beside her, leaning his folded arms on the branch she sat on. "That's nice," he said, thinking not of vistas but a view of an entirely different nature as her hand came to rest on his head. Ruffling his hair she rolled her eyes at Laurie.

"Silly boy, take a look for yourself."

Laurie turned about carefully on his branch, leaning on hers to see the grand panorama of the estate laid before them. "Oh," he said without breath, his thoughts momentarily off Jo as the beauty of spring breathed about him. He hadn't expected such a view when he first found the tree, but he supposed that was what he and Jo enjoyed about climbing trees back when they were teens and he thought the world of her. Just her.

Oh there was so much more to consider now. Laurie turned to her with a set mouth, his fingers brushing her loose-flowing skirt as she swung her legs merrily feeling more like a girl than she had in so long.

"Isn't it grand?"

"The grandest, beatingest ever," he said, trying to smile convincingly when she tore her eyes from the landscape to watch him. He once would have done anything to have those grey peepers watch him with such unveiled intensity as she did with him now and it stirred whatever was starting to spin in him again. "Jo," he said unintentionally lowly and she put an unsuspecting hand to his brow.

"Yes?" Her thumb ran across it and he closed his eyes. How could she have forgotten the warning signs for danger ahead when he… Laurie opened his eyes again and pulled her hand from his face.

"Never mind, I should be getting back," he said in a tight voice before he begun the climb down in haste. If he didn't put some space between them he would never forgive himself for what he would do – more importantly Jo would never forgive him. Or should it have been Amy 'more importantly'? He shook his head and concentrated on catching the right branches, sparing not one look to see if Jo was following.

Finally jumping to the ground he dusted himself off, the crinoline catching his eye in the sun. No, he told himself firmly, marching off towards the house. Be gone or lose everything you have shaped for yourself and those around you. Stuffing his hands in his trouser pockets he disregarded Jo's calls for him to wait and he trod onwards, trying hard to remember the touch of Amy's fingers against his throat and not the roughness of Jo's thumb against his lip in a grove long behind him.

"Teddy!" her hand was suddenly against his arm and he stopped in surprise. Cursing himself, damning his control Laurie turned to face her and in one glance knew her parted mouth, her hair in disarray and the hand across her stomach in silent comfort. He _knew_ Jo better than anyone, better than himself in better days and it was all coming back to him thanks to one stupid mistake.

"I can't," he said aloud, though he meant it for himself. "I can't."

She pulled her hand back, watching him in confusion. "What? Teddy, I don't understand."

"I-" Oh, he was so close to tearing the trust from her eyes and pulling her to the ground! Laurie pulled his hands out of his pockets uselessly, knowing how his options had collapsed into two paths – one that had bracken grown in deliberate care and the other paved in smooth stone, set ahead of his time and ordained by the God that watched him now. It had always been there, the instant the woman before him had taken her cat back and gushed about cricket without a thought.

"What's wrong?" Jo asked; worry colouring her voice as she tried desperately to read his eyes.

"I peeked," he confessed with a shrug.

"What?"

"Jo, I peeked when I said I wouldn't. Before – I mean. Oh, God," he blasphemed, covering his eyes in his hand as she stared at him gobsmacked.

"What!?"

In the space of twenty minutes every long buried, reworked and decamped feeling he'd ever had of Jo had come rushing back all too eagerly. He felt seven years younger again and as foolishly over his head with passion and he still had no idea what to do about it except convince her that she felt it too. He had been so blind thinking everything could just change and move on in its tidy completeness as he moulded himself to fit into the role the world had chosen for him. He loved Amy, but he knew Jo like he knew his heart. God, she _was_ his heart.

"I-" he begun but finding no words could convey everything he had come to realise he simple stepped forward and crashed his lips to her. Jo froze in shock or revulsion he didn't know, but he put his soul into this kiss, swallowing all the self-hatred he could feel bubbling under his skin and pouring all of his long held-back desire against her mouth. When he pulled back he hoped she understood and from the glazed expression on her still form he took heart. If he knew her best, surely she knew him better.

Jo was struck silent and he waited with bated breath. There was every chance she'd strike them and he would stride off and they would say nothing of this ever, and yet as he swallowed roughly for what seemed like the hundredth time since she pulled off her crinoline he couldn't help but hope. She might finally know what it was to love him.

One blink was all it took and all the fire and life flared back into Jo's limbs and she slapped him. Laurie stood his ground, understanding even as his fears were realised and he wished so hard that he had better discipline than a sixteen year old boy.

"How could you?" she cried unexpectedly. There was no 'dare' in that sentence or a tight-lipped look of disgust across her face, only hurt and a tremble in her lips that left him hovering between the urge to flee and bury and the need to stand and tough-it-out as he wished he had all those years ago.

"Jo," he started but she stepped away from him, looking back to where the house she shared with an out-of-state husband lay in the distance.

"Have you no idea what you've done?" Laurie blinked back, filling the space she made. His persuasion was so much more than what it had been at twenty. He leaned over her.

"Jo-"

"You stupid boy!"

He kissed her again and this time there was fight. Jo's fists fell against his chest, though not half as hard as they should and he pressed harder, claiming every inch of her mouth she would give until her fingers were in his hair and his hands around her waist as they stood in the grass. Jo fell into this drowning, all-consuming, head-spinning desire that he could never name.

"I love you," he gushed when they pulled apart and she shut her eyes, burying her head in her hands. "I've always loved you, Jo. Only this time it won't go away no matter how much distance I put between us and who wears these matching rings. Jo-" He put his hands around hers and pulled them from her face, seeing her tears, the first since he came home from Europe with a new wife and a clean slate. "I love you."

"Don't," she cried, a harsh sob escaping her. "Don't, Teddy, please!"

"Why ever not!" Old anger flooded through his blood and he pulled her hands to his chest in a fierce grip that made her wince. "You love me – I know it! There! It's all over your face." Jo cried harder, but did not stop him when he pressed another kiss against the corner of her mouth.

"Why did you come today?" she asked, taking her hands from his to wrap around her middle. Laurie ran a hand across his mouth as he looked over to his crinoline, feeling as though the morning lay a lifetime away and all that remained of his reality was midday, under a sun that seemed to weigh against his soul.

"I told you," he glanced back at Jo who watched him as she dried her eyes quickly. "Amy would not have me."

"Is this why – am I to pass the time?"

"Man alive, Jo!" he gripped her arms, looking straight back into her gaze. "How can you ask such a thing!?"

"You've said nothing for so long I thought- Laurie I was sure you were happy with Amy. You _are_ happy with Amy. I have Fritz and that is how it is! You should not have kissed me; we should not have cavorted. I have been such a fool, gallivanting about like a child when we are old, Teddy – we are! Don't look so when you know everything I have said is truth. We must… put this behind us and carry on."

"I can't."

"You must!" Jo bit her lip and looked back to her net - what had started it all. Something flicked across her face and he tried once more to kiss her.

"Teddy, - Amy!" she reminded him between his lips.

"I'm trying," he kissed her cheek "hard to remember" he pulled her bottom lip into his mouth "all to pieces" her breath sighed around his. Laurie's tongue brushed the tip of hers and he found his legs stumbling into Jo's as she melted into him as he kissed her harder and harder til neither could breathe and the ground was spinning.

"We can't," Jo gasped her hands on his face, as Laurie knelt at her feet, his arms around her waist. The grass shivered in the light wind and Laurie buried his face against Jo's stomach, clutching her hard as she struggled to remain objective and strong in the face of such unbridled desire.

"But I love you," he said into her belly and his hands snaked under the waistband of her skirt, around the tails of her blouse to touch the warmth of her skin. It was as smooth as it looked and he tugged the material free in one movement, greedily spreading his hands across her middle to feel more. "Can't," Jo's knees brought her to the ground to kiss him despite her words.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. For whom he knew not.

Her hands moved from his jaw to his hair and he knew nothing of this making love. With Amy everything had been careful, deliberate, designed but with Jo's thin lips branding hot across his neck and her short blunt nails scraping his scalp he felt as though the brambles could scratch his soul bleeding open and he would beg and beg for more. Eagerly he unbuttoned Jo's blouse, cursing his fingers when they fumbled in their incessant shaking. Finally open his gaze fell upon the camisole that had caught his hands under her shirt and he wondered that women should dress so strangely – where Amy wore a corset of whalebone and fiddle-some eyelets, Jo was naked under two shirts. And he could see, heaven on earth could he see.

He kissed her neck, tasting something entirely unfamiliar when his tongue darted out to wet the hollow between her collarbone. This was Jo – everything he had given up on and buried under a marriage and the considerable influence of society's predestination. It seemed wholly unreal and yet so deliciously, maddeningly sensational as her fingers loosened his tie and pulled his collar free, her hands darting between his neck and waistcoat. He could live on this taste, this unbelievable wildfire that inflamed his senses at every touch.

Shirking his jacket he pulled off her blouse and lifted Jo's camisole up to reveal a pair of breasts not dissimilar to her younger sister's. This thought made him pause and he saw uncertainty dance across her eyes before his hands beat hers in cupping them. The softness that met his palm was like grace tangible and it was all Laurie could do not to pull Jo onto him right then and have her all at once. As it was, he pressed his mouth to the spot behind her ear and felt her shiver as her hands skipped across his shoulders to peel off his waistcoat. Laurie spared only blinks to remove his hands and divest himself of his shirt and vest before Jo was on her back and the hard nub of her nipples pressed into his palms once more and he was kissing her as thoroughly as he ever had.

Jo moaned beneath him and he let the feeling of her voice so low roll through him from his hands that pinched and teased her to writhe her hips lasciviously against his. Groaning back, his brow skyrocketed when her hands scrambled to find the button for his trousers. Laurie kissed her chin and pulled himself to his knees to help, running his hands up the length of her skirt when she busied herself with dragging his trousers down over his slim hips. Finding the draw string for her underclothes he loosened the knot and with surprisingly steady hands he pulled them off, lifting her skirt in one.

Naked on the ground, dirt on his knees and grass cushioning her back Jo and Laurie looked at each other. Clothes made certain differences in the shape of a person and as Jo leant backwards on her elbows Laurie was inclined to think they were wasted on a figure such as hers. She was still angles where Amy was curves and there was no hourglass to the flat board of her torso but in her straight lines and cream skin he knew the girl he first fell in love with. She was straight-forward and blunt and it was right that her body should reflect it, that her grey eyes should study him with such alert care and he should feel like he owed everything to her. Jo lifted a hand to touch his stomach and the light sensation almost tickled so that the muscles moved under her fingers. She smiled but it was not coy and when she sat up to kiss his shoulder Laurie knew burning mess was infinitely preferable to the sweetness of settling.

Laurie pulled the last pin from Jo's hair and it fell away to the grass that moved with them. Her long hair hung over her shoulders and tickled his wrists as his hand moved across the skin of her back, the other preoccupied with eliciting her earlier moans as she moulded herself to him, exploring him similar. Laurie's eyes drifted shut of their own accord when her tongue twirled across his nipples and his fingers caught in her hair, his palm grazing the shell of her ear as sensitive parts made first contact.

"Jo," he choked as she rolled her hips, no stranger to this dance. His hand fell lower and tugged her closer so that her legs splayed awkwardly to accommodate his hips. Lifting her head Jo's gaze slipped between his eyes and lips as she rocked under his hands, his fingers stretched across the flesh he had only just glimpsed earlier. Eyes black and dangerous she met them with storm grey and he could see ravens calling him in their depths, her pupils dilating when he ran a finger between her knees before she shut them altogether and her head tilted to the right in a movement he would never, ever forget even if there should be a dozen Amy's to please him and only one Jo with another's surname.

"Teddy," her fingers gripped his shoulders tightly and he never wanted to hear another say his name. A moment of shuffling later and he was buried in her, hardness wrapped in soft flesh. She moaned, her head lolling against his in their upright position and he shifted til Jo lay on her back and his hands had pulled hers above her wild head as he thrusted feeling as though every wrong choice, every betrayal had been worth it if it lead to this. If she never spoke to him again and he left his house and wife it was worth it.

"How could I have ever allowed this wasn't real? That I didn't love you." he whispered into her hair as her legs wrapped themselves snugly behind him and a steady rhythm rose between them. Jo's lips were parted and her hands streaked the taut muscles of his back.

"I love you," she admitted in a final breath that made him jerk against her as she hissed and pulled his mouth to hers desperately. Jo bit his lip and he pulled back only to push in further one last time, feeling her clamp hard around him moaning in pleasure – a sound he was doomed never to forget. "I swan, Teddy I never knew it but I always have."

His head hung beside hers helplessly as her fingers found the sweat-ridden ends of his hair and he finished the last spasms of his love, fearing there would never be another chance in his living. A moment of stillness settled across them and Jo unwrapped her legs from his hips and he tried not to shiver at the smooth feeling of them slip over his skin to the ground. He pulled back to lean over her, watching her carefully as she stared resolutely at his shoulder.

"I can't believe," Jo stammered out, her hands starting to shake as they came to cover her chest and he watched with a frown, moving when she sat up to fold his arms around her. There were grass stains on her behind and mud in his fingernails and she was shaking with tears she refused to shed and he wondered when the boys would come looking for them. As the sun moved across the sky and the great tree's shadow started to reach them the full extent of what had passed hit them both terribly and both Jo and Laurie stood without further words, dressing in haste. Laurie spared only a few glances to Jo who was watching the house a mile off with deep consternation.

"I can't say I'm sorry," Laurie called when she went to retrieve her crinoline, tying the ridiculous thing about her waist with unsteady hands. Jo's head shot up at that and he knew he wasn't helping any but he had to say what he felt. "But Jo," he moved towards her, the height of the grass disguising the unevenness of the ground. "I am sorry – I fear I pushed you too fast." He tried to take her hands but she kept them occupied with fixing buttons and finding pins. "I was a cow brute – I shouldn't have-"

"I'm as much at fault," she said at last to her boots, slicked together as well as she could. "I never said 'no', Laurie and if I should go to blazes for what we've just done then I deserve it." Jo sidestepped and passed him, heading back to Plumfield with a heavy sadness she hadn't known in seven years only it was ten times worse with the stiffness in her limbs and the tenderness of her skin. "I mean every word I said," she yelled back, throwing one look over her shoulder that assured no sleep for Laurie that night.

He sat in the field until dusk.


	24. Spring

Prompt 62: Spring

A/N: sorry guys, it's been an interesting month to say the least. Never have I been so up and down physically and emotionally so I haven't been able to keep to my once a week update of some story or the other. I'm sorry this is so short and not the sequel some of you were hoping for in the last prompt... like it anyway? oh yeah in the movie this happens during winter *awkward*

...

Jo stared at the sun through her hand, fascinated by the colour it turned the skin of her fingers with its heat. Pulling her fingers together and apart she half-blinded herself before sighing loudly, dropping her hand against her companion's leg.

"I imagine this is what the south is like," she spoke, referring to the slow lazy-swing in the lounge chair Laurie had started. She felt warmed to her tips and as lazy as Aunt March's lap dog in the afternoon. "Though I've never been, so I can't say as I know much about it."

Laurie twisted his head back against it's slumped position on her shoulder to grin madly at her. "Why don't we go! I've never been either, you know. It'd be great fun, gallivanting about with southern cousins of an entirely different nature. Oh and the accents! Jo I'd give my left leg to hear you pull off one of those." He grinned cheekily.

Jo watched him with a regal stare, "Your left hand will do," she said imperiously, unable to stop the grin that bloomed across her face when Laurie happily deposited the hand in question in her own. "And what would we do in the south? They keep slaves Teddy and you know why we fight."

"Your father will come home soon Jo," Laurie sensed the tension in his friend's body at her mentioning the war. "I suppose you're right though, it's far too dangerous to go off e'splorin' just now."

"Danger has nothing to do with it! Oh what I would give to be a boy and fight alongside the men."

Laurie was very quiet and Jo suddenly realised how her words might have insulted the lad and quickly turned the conversation, "Did you read about the new play in town, my boy?"

"Hmm?" he asked, still distracted by her earlier declaration.

"The play," Jo repeated.

"Oh, yes Brooke said he might be interested in going and you know once he says something of it to Grandfather we shall all go together. How do you like that?" Laurie twisted, grin firmly back in place with happier considerations for the scheme.

"Oh yes please! Only, don't make us sit beside the fellow, will you? I fear I wouldn't be able to reply civilly to all his droll commentating as he is wont to do over a good book. I don't think I'll ever be able to read Richard III without hearing his long dull voice announce what character did what in the Henrys." Laurie laughed carelessly at Jo's opinion of his tutor without thought for the poor fellow himself, entirely in agreeance with his agreeable companion. Never did he think another person would ever share their thoughts so completely with him as Jo did. Lonely and distancing as his childhood was, Jo's chumminess was a cure sent from the Almighty to soothe his sould and give him the best friend he could ever have imagined. That she was a girl was no consequence other than the sudden and unexpected flashes of warmth in his stomach when she smiled a certain way or a fluttering in his chest - unmanly though it was it couldn't be helped! - when she took his hand as Jo had now.

"I promise, we'll invite Meg along and have a merry time of it ourselves for I'm sure Brooke will be quite occupied," Laurie said somewhat mysteriously so that Jo looked more at the garden than he. Settling back against her shoulder he was careful to say nothing else that alluded to companionship of a different kind and instead they talked of New York and the grand places of the world with as much zest and passion as any two youths might of places they hope to see in the prime of their lives.


	25. Earth

Prompt 53: Earth

The worms that spilled out of her hands wriggled in their eternal pursuit for warm, moist earth until they crawled under the dirt by her trowel, kicking little balls of dirt in their wake.

Jo sighed heavily before dumping the rest of the soil back into the hole, wiping her forehead as she looked disapprovingly at her work.

She really was a terrible gardener.

The pansies she'd intended to move from behind the house to the front windows which she now sat underneath withered by her knees, their roots still bare in the midday sun, stretching for the promised hole which was slowly filling without them in it.

"Oh I'm sorry," Jo said mournfully to the flowers that seemed to have their buds turned away from her "Really I am. Next time I'll think this through before uprooting you from home and heart." She smiled sadly at them before filling the rest of the hole, attempting to cover the mess she'd made with the large leafs of the ferns beside it before dusting her filthy hands on one of Meg's aprons.

Her sister wouldn't be mad if she explained herself well enough, Jo thought unconvincingly as she looked at the stains her hands left behind. Maybe after cleaning up the evidence it wouldn't seem like she'd worn it at all. Which, she decided as she looked down at the grass-stained, dirt-covered garment would be an afternoon's work in itself.

"Why must I rush into everything!?" Jo cried to herself as she stood with the pansies in hand; ready to return them to their spot beside the stairs at the back door. Picking up her trowel with the air of a frustrated and exhausted individual she trudged her way around the house, ignoring the little golden head with blue eyes that sat purposefully by the window that looked onto their neighbour's house.

"For heavens sake," Jo muttered under her breath as she passed the window, hiking up her skirt in one hand before she turned the corner and resignedly sat down in front of the hole she'd made an hour earlier. Rolling her eyes at her own ineptitude, Jo dumped the pansies in the ditch and haphazardly threw the dirt she'd left piled up around the hole back into it, only mindful every third scoop or so when the flowers started to tip over.

Finally the plant was back in its rightful place and Jo sat back on her feet, her hands limp by her side, the trowel's handle resting in her fingers. She stared at the purple and blue petals that hung just a little sadder than before she dug them up and once again Jo sighed heavily at her misfortune of not having a green thumb. It made her almost want to cry looking at the pathetic way the pansy drooped due to her and she hated feeling this emotional over something so small. Something other than her writing.

A rustle to her left caught her attention and Jo whipped her head around to catch what made the noise, silently thankful it stopped her eyes from welling up. She waited for any sign of movement in the hedge but it was as silent and still as when she passed it with the pansies before. Frowning at the bushes she picked up her trowel and stood, deciding it was probably a mouse that one of the cats would take care of later. Jo looked back down at the flowers and remembered that she would have to water them after re-planting it before she felt a pair of large hands cover her eyes.

"Christopher Columbus!" Jo jumped, the sudden appearance of another person scaring her half to death. "What do you think you're doing?" She knew exactly who it was.

"Well this isn't fair at all." The hands dropped and she spun around to glare at her neighbour who pouted back charmingly. How was it he was blessed with such features, Jo thought distractedly with her hands curled on her waist. "It's cheating if you don't at least guess who it is."

"Who else hides in bushes, scaring people half to death? – it's your own fault Teddy," she countered, turning back to her pansies as though they were of great interest. With a small noncommittal shrug she wandered from the bed towards the back door.

"What are you doing, please?" Laurie asked, catching up to her with ease.

"If you must know, I was only doing a little gardening. Now it's high time I go in," Jo said evasively, climbing the short step to the door.

"Wait –" Laurie stopped her hand on the door knob with his own. "Jo," he started, breathing heavily as he loomed over her.

"Teddy, please," she said, flicking her eyes up in warning. "You know you're not allowed –"

"It's not that. Why haven't you come to see me?"

Jo met Laurie's pained gaze at that, pulling her hand off the door, away from his, with slow guilt. "Laurie…"

"Jo, _please_," he said, mirroring her words but with a tone all his own. Jo dropped the trowel and Laurie took her hands in both of his; leaning forward with the most ardent look she'd seen yet. Jo swallowed at the intensity before breaking his gaze ashamedly, looking to the pansies at her side. "I don't care if your mother won't see me, or if you don't want to speak five words to me; I have to know – why did you kiss me?"

"I," she begun quickly without one of the hundreds of excuses she'd thought up every night since that particularly foolish afternoon. "I," Jo mistakenly looked back up at him, catching instantly every spec of hope etched across his face trying desperately to be hidden under an expectance for disappointment. "I," all the wind rushed out of her lungs and she felt completely boneless, not knowing how to excuse, admit, explain away her actions that day.

"Tell me it wasn't a mistake." He squeezed her hands, hope breaking its way through as he begged. "Tell me you know what I've felt for so long. Oh Jo, don't disappoint us."

Jo swallowed again, scrunching her eyes shut at the hopeless look on his face. What could she say without crushing his dear heart and burying hers in the process? She looked back at her freshly re-planted posie and the answer, the reason she'd gone and done such a stupid thing struck her with its horrid honesty.

"I kissed you because I'm horribly silly, Laurie. I kissed you because I haven't quite learnt the trick of containing myself. Of letting myself not get carried away and swept up into the daftest things. I'm silly and horrible and stupid and I've gone and ruined everything because I can't stop myself and think." Jo pulled her hands from his, wrapping her head with white knuckles. "If only I could think before diving into these calamities!"

"But Jo –"

"No," she interrupted, pushing past him to pace the lawn, hands on her back. "I'm too impulsive, Marmee knows it, God knows it, everyone does. I shouldn't have done something so stupidly spontaneous that it'd-" Jo stopped mid-rant to look across to her boy who stood so patiently by the step looking completely lost by her explanation. She'd led him on with that one act, that one spur-of-the-moment, why-not, here-goes act and now he was going to hate her forever and she'd only her nature to blame.

"So you don't…" he begun hesitantly, not wanting his suspicions to be true.

"I don't love you that way, no." Jo stilled as she saw his eyelid twitch in half a crooked wink before he crammed his hands in his pocket and looked at the ground under his polished shoes. "I'm so desperately sorry, Teddy." She stepped forward towards him, wishing she could go back in time to last Tuesday and save them both from this.

"Are you sure, Jo?" he looked up with old hope.

"I-"

"'Cause I felt something in that kiss," he took her hands again, "and I know you did too. It couldn't have been simple trick of spontaneity when you – when I…" Jo coloured at his inability to express the moment when her fingers fell into his hair and he bumped her against the banister. "It wasn't just getting overcome with an idea Jo, and you know it."

"No I- " but Jo could not finish her sentence for Laurie's lips were upon hers, soft and warm as they impressed upon her that strange feeling that crept unexpected in her stomach the first time. One hand came to rest against her cheek, the other at her waist and she prayed no one was looking into the yard when his mouth opened and hers moved in sync as he kissed her fiercely and she kissed him back. A moment later they pulled apart breathless and Laurie stared down at her accusingly.

"See?"

Jo swallowed, not as sure as she had been. She'd flown at him the time before because he'd said the rightest thing in the world to her about her writing and the idea struck her to pay him back in kind with a friendly peck. What she had intended had come out very differently though for when her father opened the garret door and saw them at the top of the stairs it was enough to have Laurie barred from the house. It was her silliness as she said, but now, with Laurie standing before her, eyes as black as her ink, his hands on her shoulders, the incessant fluttering of her stomach - Jo had to admit she rather felt like one of her heroines.

"I-" she tried but was struck with the rather good idea of kissing him again.


	26. Lovers

Prompt 23: Lovers

A/N: AHHHH im so sorry i effed up the update. god it was 4am i was so not awake having spent the last 5 hours writing it im so sorry guys - thank you soooo much Mariagoner for letting me know you are the best!!

WARNING: M again. The sequel! to Middle.

This one is a little different.

…

Every day there is a moment in which she cries. It isn't long, and it isn't useful but she steps back from the window and can't choke back a sob for her heart is breaking and no one should see it. Friedrich is downstairs and her boys are running across the field-in-sight that blurs with the heavy presence of tears in her eyes. Her hands find their way to her stomach where she clenches them in fists and scrunches up her eyes and really, really cries.

Laurie, she thinks, has no idea what he's done. She opens her eyes at the feeling of her wet cheeks and takes a few shaky breaths to calm herself. Really, she's done this so many times – it has been a whole seventeen days, crossing and uncrossing her legs – it has become a routine she is quickly mastering. Jo tells herself she will have everything under control, back to normal, spick and span when she next clamps eyes on her old neighbour, now very much brother-in-law.

Jo reminds herself constantly of his status in her family, of her own very dear position as wife and mother to a household of beloved men, little and grey though they may be. She is still Fritz's wife and she is still a Christian and she wants very much to feel like she is both and a _good woman_. But the feelings that suffocate her in these sudden moments, when she darts from that world she knows to disappear in her room and watch the window that looks across the park they covered to that great big tree that hangs almost ominously in the distance, these feelings cover and shroud the ones she wants to know again.

It's hurting her.

…

The second time there are no confessions, in fact there are barely any words at all.

Her brow is crossed in concentration, a hand wrapped tightly against his neck as he pulls her skirt up, mindful of the pot plant beside them. He kisses her cheek and she parts her lips, eyes darting to the curtain behind him. Quickly she takes his face in her shaky hands and presses her lips tightly to his and feels all the breath within him stolen. She knows he feels light-headed and irresponsible and incredibly reckless, pressing her against the wall in some dark corner of his grandfather's side-hall – he tells her so a little while after.

Jo hooks her leg over his, bringing their hips flush against each-other, inciting a particularly deep moan on Laurie's part as his hands spread wide across the wall behind her head. He kisses her again, bringing one hand down to play with the low-laced collar of her ball-dress. Had Jo not adopted this particularly flattering new fashion for the eve she knows they might not be so surely in this position. It's in the hesitation in his eyes.

"Why-" Laurie begins but with one sharp shake of Jo's head he falls silent, using his mouth instead to kiss the gentle mounds of Jo's breasts that presented themselves so impertinently to his gaze the second she'd graced them all with her presence in the grand room. Her breath rises and falls unevenly as he continues, her fingers playing with the shape of his collar or the length of his hair and both feel as though the world is spinning in their little alcove.

Sneaking one hand under her skirt he finds the waistband of her petticoats and seeks to unearth more of her soft skin, struggling with the overwhelming shape of her hooked crinoline. A few seconds of frustrating fumbling pass before Jo pushes him away with a sigh for his ineptness and she leads them down the hallway to another room Laurie had quite forgotten.

She drops his hand to close the door behind them, leaning against the heavy wood as Laurie looks about the room in quiet rapture. "The library?" he asks, standing in the narrow room, surrounded by walls of books, lit only by a single long window that filters in the moonlight.

"Really," she admonishes in a voice that makes her feel she is her seventeen year-old self and not the mother of a collective and the wife of another. "Didn't know your memory had gotten so terrible, Teddy."

He crosses the room back to her, taking Jo's hands from behind her back. His forehead comes to rest against hers as he stands over her, savouring a moment of their uninterrupted time alone. "You don't know what it does to me to hear you call me that, Jo." She kisses him again and impresses to Laurie to stop any further admissions, who smiles when her thumbs hook under his belt.

…

Later she cries into her pillow, careful that her breathing does not shudder the bed her husband shares knowing it will wake him. Jo has become a different person; she feels it in the silkiness of her thighs that never feel so shapely as when Laurie kisses them with such reverence. She closes her wet eyes and remembers. Maybe if she never speaks to him again she can pretend it all away.

But tomorrow there will be another gathering, another day there will be picnics and further along more balls with impossible temptations. She _cannot_ give into this new woman she knows she has become. She _will not_ give into this mad person. And yet when Jo Bhaer finally stops her tears from falling and her breathing slows to sleep she knows no amount of pretending will change what she has done and knows she will do again.

She falls asleep as the new woman.

…

"This is wrong," she whispers over the lemonade pitcher. He picks up the glasses, three in each hand in a skill she has long-envied. He once told her it was easier because he had such large hands but really, the girl Jo had never forgiven him for not even bothering to try to teach her the trick. Laurie gives her a warning look and she glances back to where her sister sits beside their mother, watching Daisy pull grass out from the edge of their shared blanket. Her eyes move back to him in a glare she knows he will recognise.

"We can't do this. Not now," he leans over the little makeshift table. Laurie's shoulders are set tight and a small part of her is thinking proudly that she knows now what they feel like beneath her hands. That sweat gathers between his shoulder blades when she trails her fingers south of his navel and wraps them firmly quite lower. She hates that small part of herself, hates that it is now a firm and plainly real part of her now. Jo feels disheartened but simply takes the pitcher and marches over to the blanket, pasting on a smile she hasn't felt in a month. She kneels beside Amy and pour her sister a glass that Laurie holds out for her, over his wife's shoulder. His black eyes tell her they will never have that conversation and she consigns herself to crying later when her family has gone to their homes and her husband will practice the violin.

"Here you are," she says with false cheer and Amy's fingers brush hers before Jo moves off quickly to serve her mother and boys. She ignores Laurie for the most part, who follows her faithfully with glasses in hand, looking back at Amy every now and then as they cross the field to where the lads play cricket without rules.

…

Jo's heart quickens and she knows her breath is too loud even for her ears and yet she can't stop. Oh, _won't_ stop. Laurie's teeth release the lobe of her ear and he presses hot kisses down her neck to the crook of her shoulder where he sucks warmly for several minutes. His hand is much lower, flicking and caressing places Jo's husband has not, pulling and teasing the new woman out of her to a point where she knows the world will flash and fall from under her though Laurie is above. She continues to stroke one hand along his hip, flattening it boldly against one cheek when he reaches particularly deep inside her, eliciting a moan she is unable to suppress totally. Jo feels Laurie smile against her and she can't help but do the same.

His fingers jerk one more time and her sight is all stars and instance and vanishing into pure feeling. When Jo is herself again she realises her nails will have left marks on his shoulders, though she bites them short after washing the dishes, and she releases her almost death-grip on him as reality further slips in. His forehead feels clammy and hot against her skin and she sees the tense way he perches himself over her, trying not to tremble with the feeling he holds back as the old Jo reasserts herself and thinks of what they are doing in the guest room of the house he shares with her sister.

She is a sinner. She is filth. She is everything she hates and nothing she wants to be.

Laurie kisses her, his lips press all too easily against hers, in that absurdly perfect fit that she had known existed the moment he pulled her onto her knees in the dirt when the sun was high over them. Jo closes her eyes and loses herself to this feeling of love and care and such gentle reverence. That he knows her. That he wants her. That he regrets everything in their past and nothing of what they do in the present. Her hands fall against his neck and she tenderly holds him there a moment longer, even when their lips have stilled for she feels a completeness she has denied in every waking moment.

There is no queerness, old and past, new and foreign or a trembling of her soul trapped in decisions she knows she has made with all her facilities in tact. There is no overwhelming lust that swallows her in its hold or warning flashes that the end is nigh and she will never be a whole person again.

Then his fingers twitch to her hip and yes, she thinks, there is a little bit of lust. A touch, Jo smiles to herself, spreading her legs again whilst her left hand moves from his neck, down his long lean back to the dip where his hips tell her to move to the front and stroke him languidly while he shakes and attempts to hold himself above her like he is stronger than them both. Stronger than this.

Jo's eyes are hooded and she knows the newness has slipped back in place in the look she gives him, licking her lips and cocking a very pointed brow at him before he ducks his head against the pillow and gasps as quietly as possible. She grins widely at this, a little, admittedly, giddy about the power she has over him in this position. Her own hips twist of their own accord and Jo supposes she is as taken to this as he, especially when he moves over her fully, staring down at her as though he will never let her leave this bed, this moment where he is open and daring and everything she once saw in a boy who had hinted such things when she wanted nothing to do with them.

Man alive! She'd never thought they'd be here doing this three weeks ago let alone when she was twenty-something and he was looking at her as though the world lay in her lips. Now, Jo finds, she can't stop the wheels set in motion and when his hand comes to hold her wrist and urge her faster she does not resist. It is difficult to even stay afloat once the floodgates have open let alone resist.

Laurie's eyes are falling shut and she knows it is time to release him, to lift her hips off the sheets and hook her legs around his as he instinctively plunges towards her, into her. She wishes a little, that this had been easier with Fritz who laid lovingly upon her not so long ago, but she supposes, he does not have Laurie's eyes. If it had been easier, maybe, she thinks, maybe she could have said no.

Could not have found the contrasts so strikingly different.

And yet she is under Laurie, her small hands longer than Amy's gripping his waist as he pushes, in and out, in and in until she feels him quivering inside of her and it takes one touch of her breasts to push Jo into pulling him the whole length in. It is like a spasm one of her boys had, she thinks distractingly, Laurie spends himself, breathing in short hard breaths against her shoulder that feel what she guesses the desert must. Her body is only humming again but she finds she likes the feeling almost as much when Laurie begs them to go together.

"This," he says breathless, his thumb pawing against her arm in a disconnected rhythm, "This is like a duet." She feels Laurie smile against the curve of her breast and she understands his meaning. Their coming together is never truly the same but in parts; they cross in harmony, in others their sorrow or pleasure is tremendously voiced in some selfish tangent designed for one of the divas she knows he once entertained.

"Might be easier if I could read music," she tells him quietly. It is only the third week and Amy will be home from town in twenty minutes after which Jo will have to smile her opinion of the coffee and Laurie will wave his thanks for the basket of eggs. Laurie slowly pulls himself off her, scrubbing his face with both hands and Jo sees that he looks more tired than she has ever seen him before. His feet touch the floor and she turns her head on the pillow to stare at him as he dresses carefully in the clothes his wife dressed him in that morning. Laurie sits on the edge of the bed again and she stares as he ties the laces of his shoes, thinking only to cover her chest when he looks back and frowns at her laziness.

She will be Jo Bhaer when she buttons the last button on that dress again and it frightens her.

…

She notices, rather early the following Monday that there is no blood on the rag between her legs. Fritz smiles warmly at her when she closes the bathroom door and straightens the large black loose tie under her pressed linen collar. She feels important and business-like and not a little school-marmish when she passes him to exit the bedroom and head for the boys' rooms.

Her hands are white as they rest against the waist of her wide skirt but her even expression never falters. Jo thinks suddenly she hasn't cried for three days now and feels as though accomplishment is always foolishly felt before the day has begun when she raps on a bedroom door and hears the waking voices of children who will be hungry in ten minutes.

Jo gathers her skirts and hurries downstairs to make certain the maid has risen with the cock.

…

Another four days pass without much consequence, which is to say Laurie did not pay any unusual visits and she did not think to find excuses to see him herself. The guilt, she notices a little thankful and ashamed at once, has lessened. She no longer feels melodramatic or like dashing her brains when her husband looks at her with that slow long look that used to kindle her insides but now only makes her smile in a silly way she wishes it wouldn't. She does not mean to find his meaning in such a patronising manner but Jo feels quite keenly she has known the depths of feeling and the intensity of meaning from another man, though in her quiet time she knows this too is fleetingly naïve.

The Professor's hand brushes hers at the table in a rare instance where they have chosen to sit together instead of at the heads so that two boys feel especially special. His smile is slow under that beard of his but she is touched all the same, knowing that he promises so much and she can only return so little. He feels so much more _better_ than her and she withdraws her hand to pick up her fork with as little haste so that he will not feel put-out, though Jo fears he will think she can use her other hand to eat.

She loves him dearly, but cannot help feel that his sinless self is perhaps just a little too good and it annoys her that the thought annoys her.

Jo is sharp with the boys about their table manners and for once, supper is taken in almost complete silence though she regrets every snappish word she speaks that night. She finds it difficult to maintain a glower when all she wants is to crawl into bed and pretend her husband is really her husband and she is not thinking of another who she has not seen since Saturday.

A week, she thinks in that abrupt connection of one slow thought to another rather unsuspected one. A week and there has been no blood. Jo looks to her lap as though she is only straightening her napkin but thinks hard on what this means, that no blood has flowed from her in six weeks. Looking up to find her boys have finished their meals she excuses the family and stands, calmly collecting her still mostly-full plate and the empty ones around her. Breathing through her nose in slow even breaths she thinks she will wait two more weeks before she panics.

Sometimes these things happen, Jo convinces herself, depositing the scraps in the dog's bowl before wiping her again-white hands against the grey uniform of her dress before her husband bids her to read to the children as he prepares for bed with a fond wink.

Jo tries hard not to think of the differences in that mannerism.

…

Jo lets him lead that evening, unable to imagine what she would do if left to her own devices. She rather imagines she might just gape down at him and hurriedly gush about the price of flour. He isn't as tall as Laurie, she notices, for his knees do not bend around hers and when his beard is against her neck she can only describe the sensation as comforting. Arousing does not even come to mind as she keeps her arms around him, the covers pulled up to their necks. She wonders oddly as he presses a hand he warms with his breath against her hip if Laurie would laugh if she told him.

Fritz is not a selfish lover, nor so inexperienced to make the effort so unenjoyable that Jo must simply shut her eyes and hold to it. She feels pleasantly warm as he brushes his thumb against that nub that flickers life through her limbs and she appreciates every kiss he presses against her collarbone. She knows a kind of desperate worship from Laurie, but with the Professor it is more an exploration in care and devotion that she knows her boy would never slow for unless his baser need to know she was his had already been satisfied.

She has only seen her husband in his total nakedness once and she is grateful that he cares so for her wellbeing and comfort that she should be encompassed by the quilts, so horribly embarrassed as she was on their wedding night. Time, it should be noted she thinks a little pointedly, changes most things and she finds herself feeling a little suffocated as her body temperature soars with his hands on her breasts and his feet against her legs waiting for him.

She could always rely on this man, Jo knows, and as her head falls back on the pillow at the sensation of him at her entrance, his arms around her and his lips on her jaw, hers open and empty as she gasps silently for air in the stifled heat of the bed, she knows deep down that it is part of the problem. He is safe, predictable and routine in his understandings of her limits and faults that he accommodates for them even though they have changed from what he recognised. The first treatment does not always last through the new symptoms and as she grips his neck when he thrusts in barely contained motions she wishes he knew these things.

Fritz knows a lot of things but Jo feels he did not seem to know this newer woman.

…

She bathes with lavender-scented oil when she knows her sister prefers rosewater and he smiles in a knowing way when his mouth leaves the spot on her shoulder that she has left uncovered. They are in the broom closet of all places and Jo is struggling not to kick the metal pail that will alert the wild boys of their hiding spot.

"This was a terrible idea," she mumbles, covering her smiling face in one hand as the other rests on Laurie's shoulder as he looms over her.

"Which please?" he asks in that boyish way of his that seems so much more incorrigible in her presence. "Playing hide and seek with the boys or hiding together?" Jo can see his teeth in the light of the crack between the door and frame.

"Both," she shakes her head and tries not to laugh as he does against her neck, one hand sneaking lower than her waist. She gently pushes him off but finds no easy retreat especially when he pulls his head up to smile at her again.

"Well I don't –"

"Clearly," she grumbles.

"But it was your idea after all Jo March and I'm not one to ignore ideas from such genius. Have I told you how much I like this dress on you?"

Jo does not miss his slip and she is sure he doesn't either for his lips are quickly against hers. Jo forgets all last names as his mouth moves with hers and she thinks about how much she has wanted this since he 'popped over f'th' afternoon'. Shame, she thinks, will set in later, but for the moment she wraps her arms around his tall frame and holds him to her as she can feel playfulness slip away and a real tear at her throat appear in its place.

When they break apart she thinks he looks ready to cry too and it is then that the door is opened and Laurie thankfully pushes her out first crying "You can't see me, Mother Bhaer's in the way!" The little boy laughs as Jo steps over and around him grouchily calling "You oaf!" to Laurie who chuckles with the boy whom he picks up and spins about the kitchen only to put him down and watch as he races outside.

Laurie looks back at her after a minute, her hand is casually leaning against the kitchen table and she is smiling at him oh so much like the fifteen-year-old who raved about climbing and her sister's cats and becoming a writer one day that she misses the instant his demeanor changes.

"Amy's pregnant." He says with such a gravelled voice she does not think it's his.

Jo tries hard to form the word 'what' but all sensibility has left her with those two words. Laurie is standing very still in her kitchen and she feels as though she is going to be sick or faint or scream or _do something_ but simply stares back.

"I'm so s-"

"Are you sure?"

Laurie nods, looking back to the back door with downcast eyes. "We had the doctor call."

Jo nods once too, stopping when she is sure if she moves the sudden tears in her eyes will betray her and she steps away from the table, looking out the window knowing with what field the one before her connects to.

She takes a moment so that her voice will be clear though she can feel that her tears cannot be blinked away without falling.

"Then this is it."

"Jo –" he starts but she turns to him and he loses any ability to comfort her in a comfortless situation. He should not even need to worry about her; she thinks angrily to herself, knowing her anger stems from her own hatred of herself but finds it pushing out to him. He should be happy for Amy right now.

"Go," she says in a watery voice she knows sounds more like 'no' for every bit of this circumstance. She sees that Laurie looks ready to step forward, toward her to do unspeakable things that will hurt her sister and her husband and she really, truly wants and needs. "Be with Amy, Laurie."

He blinks once at the use of a name she hasn't called him privately since seven weeks ago and she feels her heart crush entirely when he nods once and leaves through the back door.

She will have to tell Fritz tonight when he brings the older lads home from working on the orchard.

She will have to tell him she is pregnant too.


	27. Purple

Prompt 16: Purple

WARNING: oh so definitely m. please, this has adult content. Avoid if not suitable for your age. Been working on this one a long while but I finally finished it. It's so wrong but man, these two are passionate and Amy deserves to understand it at least once in one of these stories.

…

Amy watched as he kissed her. It wasn't like anything she'd seen before and if it wasn't enough he was kissing another woman, it was her sister. His head swooped, his hands reverently brushing against her cheeks as his lips held hers, pushing and teasing them open into a kiss harsher, more passionate than Amy thought was reasonable.

She saw his tongue run against the line of Jo's mouth and Amy held a hand to her own lips, tracing the same path.

She didn't know that path.

Jo made the most un-Jo-like sound her sister had ever heard, gasping at the back of her throat as she leaned into a kiss she swore she'd never be part of. Amy's eyes widened as her sister moaned, her hand rising with a shake Amy felt all over, grasping at Laurie's jacket as his thumbs moved across her skin.

Slowly Jo's other hand dropped the book she had been reading from, the same book that they whispered over, the same book that made Laurie stare intensely and Jo's eyes glaze over. The book that Amy had given to Jo as a wedding gift. The purple binding slipped from her careless fingers as they moved to hold Laurie's face closer.

Amy held her cold hands against her mouth, unblinking as her husband's hands moved lower, across Jo's shoulders, down her sides to rest against her waist. She saw the way he pulled her closer, possessing the very space she sat in as he kissed her deeply until they couldn't breathe.

"Teddy," Jo gasped when they finally broke apart. Amy sat quietly, still unnoticed as Laurie knocked his forehead against Jo's, looking drunk with the passion Amy had witnessed.

"I've wanted to do that for a very long time."

She wanted to cry.

Jo looked equally heartbroken as she laid her head against his shoulder, her hand still roaming the contours of the left side of his face. "Oh Teddy, please don't say that."

"Why not? It's true!" he spoke quietly but firmly, shifting Jo about in his arms until he held her closer and more desperately than Amy had ever been held in her life. She watched his clenched fists move about Jo's lower back until the girl looked up into his face, looking as serious as she had by Beth's side.

"Still, you shouldn't say such things."

"What should I say then, Jo? That I love you? I always have and I always will, dearest." He kissed her briefly again and Amy took note of the way Jo's eyes closed in the action.

Jo let two tears fall as she moved to hold him again, her head facing Amy's direction and still not seeing. "I do too." It was so quiet Amy might have missed it if she hadn't been watching her sister's lips instead of her husband's eyes.

"Truly Jo?" Laurie's face hadn't held hope like that since the day he finished college.

Jo looked ready to cry but still she nodded, so slightly that Laurie was focused more on the truth in her eyes than any other movement in the room.

"I couldn't – I've only –" he whispered disjointedly until he settled for kissing her again, letting his mouth consume hers. It was as passionate as the first and Amy couldn't imagine them kissing any other way. She could never kiss him like that; she never even considered it, not even when he almost begged in the darkest part of night as she lay on top of him trembling.

Amy lifted her hands from her mouth, feeling her cheeks wet with tears she had unwittingly spent in watching the scene unfold. These were words and feelings she was never to know and Amy wished, prayed desperately with her being she could go back in time and never have dropped her pincushion behind the sofa.

Laurie was groaning at the feel of Jo's nails across the hair on his nape and Amy wondered how she had never conjured the same intensity of sound when he entered her. She gasped soundlessly at the way her sister arched against him when his hand brushed unintentionally against her breast, moving to take her thigh through the layers of skirts that fell across her legs. Her heart was beating in time with their movement, every inch of her screaming to make it stop and keeping her frozen behind the crimson sofa all the same.

"Laurie," she whispered as he devoured Jo's lips, his fingers pressed hard against her skin enough to leave bruises. Amy wondered at his recklessness when he had been only too gentle with her, even when she had accidently scratched his shoulders the first night and he smiled sadly.

Amy knew this hadn't come from nowhere, the ferocity of their actions the result of bottled-up desires and secrets they had buried when they took their vows to two other people. Amy fell back further recalling Professor Bhaer's quiet confession to her next to the violet's in the Laurence's conservatorium. She had shaken off his well-thought out inklings that Jo needed more than what he had to give and hadn't her husband been asking after Mrs. Bhaer even more these past few months?

Her eyes fell to the book that was slowly tipping further to the edge of the couch as the pair moved heedless of it. The purple cover looked dark in the shade of Jo's skirt and Amy thought of the words it contained, a story seemingly unimportant in the scheme of things that had brought her husband and sister to this point. She sat against the wall, pressing her back to it whenever her gaze lifted to the couple trying desperately not to break out into sobs that would alert them to her presence. If she could crawl out of the room, she considered distractedly until the book fell to the floor and made Jo jump away from Laurie.

"We can't do this," Jo declared, tears in her voice. Quickly she stood, throwing out her hands to stop Laurie from following the action. "No, Laurie you married Amy, we both have our families to think of. This is so wrong," she clamped a hand across her mouth unknowingly copying her sister's manner. Amy silently begged Laurie to tear his eyes from Jo's face and think, _think_ of her instead but his brow was set and she knew she'd lost him.

"If it's so wrong, why can't I stop?"

Amy shut her eyes as Jo moved around the settee to recover the book, ignoring his words.

"Jo, you can't simply pretend the last few minutes never occurred."

"I'll be damned if I don't," she swore and Amy heard a scuffle as Laurie took to his feet and faced Jo with old determination.

"Jo –"

"I can't."

Amy opened her eyes, hands shaking as Laurie kissed Jo again. _Oh God_, she thought.

"I won't," her sister whispered when he stopped, immediately contradicted by his next kiss where she moved her arms around his shoulders, holding to him tightly.

_Oh God_, Amy thought one last time before the next few minutes became a blur of heat and a deep, dark sickness settled inside of her as she watched without sound or thought or even the sensibility to move away.

Laurie started a dance that had been a long-time coming and Jo took to it with undiscovered ease as his hand slipped under the simple grey of her dress, pulling the cheap material up to his shoulder. Jo's face was red but she never asked him to stop and Amy unblinkingly saw the moment his fingers found the warmth of her skin he knew intimately on her own. Jo's head tipped back and with her mouth open the prettiest blush Amy had ever seen on her sister stained across her cheeks. Laurie kissed Jo's still-covered stomach, his other arm wrapped tightly around her waist.

Jo's hands moved back to his hair, the very same hair he'd begged Amy to not cut, moaning as his attention started in earnest and a wicked smile crossed his face. Amy pulled her knees to her chest and watched as her sister's knees shook and Laurie twisted to kiss her arms as they wrapped loosely around his head. Jo's breathing filled the room, her bloomer legs peaking lower under the fabric of her dress than was strictly modest. Laurie's hand moved quickly and surely in time with each sharp intake of Jo's breath and his other moved to cup the shade of her breast as she looked ready to collapse onto the settee behind them.

Laurie stood from his half-crouched position and covered her open mouth with his own just as Jo's pleasure reached her voice. Amy's eyes could not look away, even as she saw his hand down her sister's drawers from his new position, kissing her, holding her in such a foreign way that she didn't wonder when Jo's hands clawed at his neck and her knees did finally give way.

He knelt before her on the settee as she caught her breath and Amy found she had to catch her own too. Jo was suddenly very still and Amy's vision was blurred before she swiped the back of her fingers across her eyes. Disbelief coloured her expression for what she had just witnessed and she could see it mirrored in Jo's gaze. Laurie kissed her quickly before sitting back on his knees, and Amy could tell from the set of his shoulders he was worried. She'd come to know that look especially well in the past two months and now it seemed obvious why.

"Teddy, please don't make me say it." She said at last and Amy watched as his shoulders sagged, misery returning to his being as swiftly as he'd banished it in Nice.

He turned his head away from her and Amy could not help admire his profile, even after everything – God, she still loved him. His eyes closed briefly before he faced her again and was rewarded with the softest of kisses from Jo, whose hands stroked the linen of his collar.

"Why do you still deny your heart, Jo?" he asked, anger present in his voice even as they held each other tenderly.

"What we just did – it was – it was a mistake, Teddy. It can never happen again, and I – you're wife, she'll be in from her walk soon." Amy silently added, 'sooner than you think' before her collapsed heart broke a little more when Laurie laid his head in Jo's lap and she looked utterly helpless. His arms were around her hips and he looked very much like he would refuse to go. "Please understand," Jo said quietly, running her hand through his curly crop as he suppressed a manful choke they'd all considered him grown-out-of.

A moment later he pulled himself out of the pathetic embrace and stood awkwardly before her. Amy watched as Jo lifted herself out of the seat, picking up the book by way and handed it back to Laurie. It was another moment before he accepted it and Jo reached across the gap between him to kiss his cheek so lightly she might not have bothered at all. Amy crushed her hands in her lap, feeling the stinging prick of the needle stuck in the work she'd entirely forgotten. Looking down in her lap she wordlessly cursed the moment she ever took to needlework, the very moment it fell from her lap and the very idea she had to retrieve it. Had she simply let unfinished business be she would not be put in this horrendous spot.

Amy trembled; looking up at the two again with very heavy tears in her eyes, clutching her pricked hand to her chest as they pulled apart from what Jo promised would be their last embrace. Her sister ducked her head at Laurie's long look before quitting the room with as much haste as was proper, her hands on the plaid at her stomach. Laurie remained rooted in his spot for five or so minutes before he too left the room, heading out to the kitchen to where Amy knew he would begin the pretence of looking for her as he had the moment he'd caught Jo in the doorway to their mother's house. She looked across to the settee and saw the purple-bound book lying innocently upon it, as though anyone might pick it up.

Amy turned her shoulder into the wall, nursing her hand gently as she cried on the floor.


	28. He

Prompt 84: He

A/N: _Well it's daylight savings, so I feel like I have more time to finish this chapter before dinner – do you guys get daylight savings overseas? I dunno if it's just a weird Australian thing (though I dunno if it's just a New South Wales thing here actually *awkward*) anyhow, had the start of this written a while ago when doctor who was more tv episodes and less 'specials'. Only a few more before DT turns into Matt Smith!_

…

"You love him more than me!?"

Jo elbowed Laurie in the gut as she tried to resettle herself comfortably on the couch. Unfortunately their shoving and teasing tended to make whatever cosy warm spot you made in the sofa disappear and it was near impossible to get back.

"Please, that's obvious. He's tall and rakishly thin and has the best hair. How could anyone not?" Jo smiled, shrugging as if it was a matter of fact that every person with a speck of common sense loved the Doctor.

"Oh you're rude!" Laurie looked offended, crossing his arms. Jo's attention was on the television but he noticed the grin on her face as her hand crawled up his side to rest on his elbow.

"I know, but you know how much I love this show." Her tone was entirely unapologetic.

Laurie sniffed, watching the British science fiction characters run across the screen with a bit too much delight for an impending-doom situation. How Jo could be so completely obsessed with a B grade set, a girl from some housing commission in London and a tall gangly guy with ridiculous hair was beyond him.

Jo threaded her arm through one of his crossed ones, tucking her legs underneath herself as they sat watching the second episode in a marathon she promised Laurie wouldn't be something he'd regret. Well he'd rather hoped that would have included more kissing and less David Tennant.

God the eyes she made for that man!

Jo's head brushed his shoulder and he risked a look at her while she was engrossed with whatever universe-scaled danger was present (as it was in every episode he'd managed to see). Laurie rolled his eyes but found he sort of liked how unguarded Jo was whenever something took her attention. She wasn't pulling any faces at him for once or looking very unsure about touching him in anyway that might have crossed the best-friend line he seemed to be trying to pull them over as of late.

Couldn't help it, could he? It was Jo and ever since he'd moved next door he couldn't even look at another girl the same way. She was brilliant in her own determined way, loved books and writing and her sheer ability to climb trees faster than any of the boys in their neighbourhood since he'd known her definitely put her in a league of her own. She talked about ice-skating and the football and wanted to go to Europe one day and had no idea what the word 'boring' or 'useless' meant.

Most of all she made him feel wanted.

Jo suddenly glanced sideways at him and he quickly glued his eyes on the television in front.

"It's rude to stare you know, Teddy."

Laurie carefully schooled his face into a look of surprise. "I never!"

Jo simply arched a very particular eyebrow before turning back to the tv again. Feeling sure she wouldn't mention it again Laure sagged into the couch, letting their heads almost touch as the BBC show continued.

Jo's arm tightened around his, just a little and he smiled despite her words, "Anyway, the Doctor's rude too so you've got something in common."


End file.
